Actions speak louder than looks: The effects of avatar appearance and in-game actions on subsequent prosocial behavior
Vol.14,No.4(2020)
Several experimental studies in recent years have shown an effect of the appearance of embodied avatars in a digital environment on subsequent behaviors in unrelated context. However, such studies often focus exclusively on the appearance of avatars, and do not consider the nature of the behavior carried out in-game. This article presents an experiment exploring the combined effects of avatar appearance and in-game behavior on subsequent prosocial behavior in an unrelated task. 120 undergraduate students from a medical and health sciences course traversed a digital environment in a roleplaying game, battling opponents (“mobs”) along the way. Using a factorial design, participants embodied either a heroic or a villainous avatar, and battled good or evil mobs. Results show that mob appearance, but not avatar appearance, affected prosocial behavior in a subsequent unrelated task. Participants having battled negative-looking mobs tended to exhibit more prosocial behavior than those having battled positive-looking mobs. These results, highlighting the potential of avatar’s behavior to influence user’s subsequent behavior, are discussed in terms of self-perception, theoretical insight and research on the Proteus effect.
Avatar appearance; prosocial behavior; in-game behavior; Proteus effect; video games
Adams, F. M., & Osgood, C. E. (1973). A Cross-cultural study of the affective meanings of color. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 4(2), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/002202217300400201
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12(5), 353–359. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00366
Anderson, C. A., & Dill, K. E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 772–790. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.772
Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in Eastern and Western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018251
Ash, E. (2016). Priming or Proteus effect? Examining the effects of avatar race on in-game behavior and post-play aggressive cognition and affect in video games. Games and Culture, 11(4), 422–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014568870
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype-activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 230–244. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230
Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1–62). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60024-6
Buckley, K. E., & Anderson, C. A. (2006). A theoretical model of the effects and consequences of playing video games. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences (pp. 363–378). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Buisine, S., & Guegan, J. (2020). Proteus vs. social identity effects on virtual brainstorming. Behaviour & Information Technology, 39(5), 594–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1605408
Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2002). Violent video games and hostile expectations: A test of the General Aggression Model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1679–1686. https://doi.org/10.1177/014616702237649
Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2009). Comfortably numb: Desensitizing effects of violent media on helping others. Psychological Science, 20(3), 273–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02287.x
Calvillo-Gámez, E. H., Cairns, P., & Cox, A. L. (2010). Assessing the core elements of the gaming experience. In R. Bernhaupt (Ed.), Evaluating the user experience in games: Concepts and methods (pp. 47–71). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-963-3_4
Carnagey, N. L., Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2007). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(3), 489–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.003
Cheung, P. C., Ma, H. K., & Shek, D. T. L. (1998). Conceptions of success: Their correlates with prosocial orientation and behaviour in Chinese adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 21(1), 31–42. https://doi.org/10.1006/jado.1997.0127
Eastin, M. S., Appiah, O., & Cicchirllo, V. (2009). Identification and the influence of cultural stereotyping on postvideogame play hostility. Human Communication Research, 35(3), 337–356. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01354.x
Ewell, P. J., Hamilton, J. C., & Guadagno, R. E. (2018). How do videogame players identify their actions? Integrating Action Identification Theory and videogame play via the Behavior Identification Form - Gamer. Computers in Human Behavior, 81, 189–197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.12.019
Festinger, L., Pepitone, A., & Newcomb, T. (1952). Some consequences of de-individuation in a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47(Suppl. 2), 382–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0057906
Gentile, D. A., Anderson, C. A., Yukawa, S., Ihori, N., Saleem, M., Ming, L. K., Shibuya, A., Liau, A. K., Khoo, A., Bushman, B. J., Huesmann, L. R., & Sakamoto, A. (2009). The effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behaviors: International evidence from correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(6), 752–763. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209333045
Gergen, K. J., Gergen, M. M., & Barton, W. H. (1973). Deviance in dark. Psychology Today, 7(5), 129–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/e400532009-005
Gitter, S. A., Ewell, P. J., Guadagno, R. E., Stillman, T. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2013). Virtually justifiable homicide: The effects of prosocial contexts on the link between violent video games, aggression, and prosocial and hostile cognition. Aggressive Behavior, 39(5), 346–354. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21487
Greitemeyer, T., & Mügge, D. O. (2014). Video games do affect social outcomes: A meta-analytic review of the effects of violent and prosocial video game play. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(5), 578–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213520459
Greitemeyer, T., & Osswald, S. (2010). Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016997
Greitemeyer, T., & Osswald, S. (2011). Playing prosocial video games increases the accessibility of prosocial thoughts. The Journal of Social Psychology, 151(2), 121–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224540903365588
Grizzard, M., Tamborini, R., Lewis, R. J., Wang, L., & Prabhu, S. (2014). Being bad in a video game can make us morally sensitive. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(8), 499–504. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2013.0658
Guegan, J., Buisine, S., Mantelet, F., Maranzana, N., & Segonds, F. (2016). Avatar-mediated creativity: When embodying inventors makes engineers more creative. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 165–175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.024
Happ, C., Melzer, A., & Steffgen, G. (2013). Superman vs. BAD man? The effects of empathy and game character in violent video games. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(10), 774–778. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0695
Hartmann, T., Toz, E., & Brandon, M. (2010). Just a game? Unjustified virtual violence produces guilt in empathetic players. Media Psychology, 13(4), 339–363. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2010.524912
Hasan, Y., Bègue, L., Scharkow, M., & Bushman, B. J. (2013). The more you play, the more aggressive you become: A long-term experimental study of cumulative violent video game effects on hostile expectations and aggressive behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 224–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.016
Hefner, D., Klimmt, C., & Vorderer, P. (2007). Identification with the player character as determinant of video game enjoyment. In L. Ma, M. Rauterberg, & R. Nakatsu (Eds.), Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2007 (pp. 39–48). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74873-1_6
Klimmt, C., Hefner, D., & Vorderer, P. (2009). The video game experience as “true” identification: A theory of enjoyable alterations of players’ self-perception. Communication Theory, 19(4), 351–373. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2009.01347.x
Klimmt, C., Schmid, H., Nosper, A., Hartmann, T., & Vorderer, P. (2006a). ‘Moral management’: Dealing with moral concerns to maintain enjoyment of violent video games. In A. Jahn-Sudmann & R. Stockmann (Eds.), Computer games as a sociocultural phenomenon: Games without frontiers, war without tears (pp. 108–118). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583306_11
Klimmt, C., Schmid, H., Nosper, A., Hartmann, T., & Vorderer, P. (2006b). How players manage moral concerns to make video game violence enjoyable. Communications, 31(3), 309–326. https://doi.org/10.1515/COMMUN.2006.020
Krakowiak, K. M., & Oliver, M. B. (2012). When good characters do bad things: Examining the effect of moral ambiguity on enjoyment. Journal of Communication, 62(1), 117–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01618.x
Nelson, L. D., & Norton, M. I. (2005). From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future helping. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(4), 423–430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.08.003
Peña, J., & Chen, M. (2017). With great power comes great responsibility: Superhero primes and expansive poses influence prosocial behavior after a motion-controlled game task. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 378–385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.07.039
Peña, J., Hancock, J. T., & Merola, N. A. (2009). The priming effects of avatars in virtual settings. Communication Research, 36(6), 838–856. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650209346802
Peña, J., Khan, S., & Alexopoulos, C. (2016). I am what I see: How avatar and opponent agent body size affects physical activity among men playing exergames. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 21(3), 195-209. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12151
Ratan, R., Beyea, D., Li, B. J., & Graciano, L. (2020). Avatar characteristics induce users’ behavioral conformity with small-to-medium effect sizes: A meta-analysis of the Proteus effect. Media Psychology, 23(5), 651–675. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2019.1623698
Rosenberg, R. S., Baughman, S. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2013). Virtual superheroes: Using superpowers in virtual reality to encourage prosocial behavior. PLoS ONE, 8(1), Article e55003. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055003
Sauer, J. D., Drummond, A., & Nova, N. (2015). Violent video games: The effects of narrative context and reward structure on in-game and postgame aggression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21(3), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000050
Shafer, D. M., & Raney, A. A. (2012). Exploring how we enjoy antihero narratives. Journal of Communication, 62(6), 1028–1046. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01682.x
Spivey, C. B., & Prentice-Dunn, S. (1990). Assessing the directionality of deindividuated behavior: Effects of deindividuation, modeling, and private self-consciousness on aggressive and prosocial responses. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 11(4), 387–403. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp1104_3
Tamborini, R. (2011). Moral intuition and media entertainment. Journal of Media Psychology, 23(1), 39–45. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000031
Van Looy, J., Courtois, C., De Vocht, M., & De Marez, L. (2012). Player identification in online games: Validation of a scale for measuring identification in MMOGs. Media Psychology, 15(2), 197–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2012.674917
Weaver, A. J., & Lewis, N. (2012). Mirrored morality: An exploration of moral choice in video games. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15(11), 610–614. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0235
Yee, N., & Bailenson, J. (2007). The Proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271–290. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x
Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., & Ducheneaut, N. (2009). The Proteus effect: Implications of transformed digital self-representation on online and offline behavior. Communication Research, 36(2), 285–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650208330254
Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., & Merget, D. (2007). The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(1), 115–121. https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2006.9984
Yoon, G., & Vargas, P. T. (2014). Know thy avatar: The unintended effect of virtual-self representation on behavior. Psychological Science, 25(4), 1043–1045. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613519271
Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order vs. deindividuation, impulse and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 17, pp. 237–307). University of Nebraska Press.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2020 Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace