Who am I ‐ and if so, where?: An experiment on personality in online virtual realities

Abstract

Virtual realities form technical platform, raising questions about the human mind, communication and identity (Bainbridge, 2007). In recent studies it appears that users of virtual realities behave closer to their ideal self (Bessiére, Seay & Kiesler, 2007), are more confident in negotiation tasks (Yee & Bailenson, 2007) in comparison to their behavior in real life and that Dutch students keep bigger interpersonal distance towards an Arabic avatar than a Caucasian one (Wigboldus, 2006). Despite the evident difference in behavior in real life versus virtual life, there is hardly any scientific research on the influence of a virtual reality on the identity perception and the personality of a user of these virtual realities. The present study attempts to contribute to filling this gap by assessing the potential difference between real-life personality and the ‘virtual’ avatar personality using the online 3D world of Second Life. 34 Dutch participants were asked to use their own avatar or create a new avatar within this online virtual reality, to communicate with other avatars and finally to fill in the Big Five personality questionnaire 5 Persoonlijkheids Factoren Test (5PFT) via a virtual interactive testing screen within Second Life. The virtual 5 PFT scores were compared to pencil and paper scores of the same questionnaire, which was filled in by all 34 participants during a first-year undergraduate test battery, seven months prior to the virtual testing. The results show no difference for any of the five subscales ( extraversion, friendliness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, development) between the pencil and paper and the virtual version, implying that users of virtual realities do not create a ‘virtual’ personality for their avatar. Furthermore, high scores of the internal consistency and high test-retest correlations between the two versions were found, which are in turn very similar to the original test-retest scores of the 5PFT (Elshout & Akkerman, 1975). These findings show the potential of virtual realities as new platforms for reliable (psychological) testing and future clinical applications.