 All right, I have 10 o'clock and we have a pretty full agenda to get through today, so if everyone will settle down and take your seats and so forth, let's get this program started. Okay, welcome to the Science Circle panel discussion. Science Circle is a grant funded nonprofit based in the Netherlands to develop virtual world platforms for education. To further this objective, we present weekly multimedia lectures by working scientists, experts, educators, including these monthly panel discussions. Recently, we have been talking about using virtual worlds as platforms for working and socializing during COVID-19 quarantine. A common barrier to broader acceptance of platforms like Second Life is avatars. Today, we will think hard about why people have psychologically powerful or at least interesting reactions to avatars. I think being aware of the psychology that operates in connection with avatars helps us better cope with virtual world life. To help us explore this topic, I'm proud to have with us Dominique Mendo, Melda, Kendra Cloud in Second Life, for our keynote presentation. Dominique holds a master's degree in industrial and communication psychology and is a lecturer in psychology and communications. As an experienced education expert with a focus on digital learning environments, she has extensive professional expertise in curriculum design. She shows a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and therefore conducts transgender awareness training on a voluntary basis. As a PhD student, her research focuses on educational processes in virtual worlds and the psychological impact of avatars. Pretty good, right? So very happy to have her with us today for her keynote presentation. In addition to Dominique, Kendra, I've also asked DeepThinker, oh, DP, a regular Science Circle online contributor to participate and also Phil Youngblood, Vic, who is a favorite Science Circle contributor. So Kendra will give a presentation for, I don't know, about 30 minutes or so. And then, oops, are we missing DP? I just noticed her chair is empty. At any rate, hopefully she will return on time. At any rate, let's go ahead and let Kendra give her presentation. I'm going to ask her to come up here to the microphone since she's so elegantly dressed. And I will swap seats with her during her presentation. And then we'll switch back and continue our discussion as normal. So, Kendra, go ahead and come over here by the, sit at the microphone. And we look forward to your presentation on avatar psychology. Oh, well, if your avatar controls are not working well, we can scrap that plan and go ahead and just give your presentation from your chair. That's fine. I will resume my station at the microphone. I will read Kendra's text, which she is posting in the nearby chat for the benefit of the video viewers who may be watching this on YouTube or something after the fact. Hello, and welcome to my input on avatar psychology. My name is Kendra in real life, Dominique Meldow. And my pronouns are her, her and hers. I'm very happy to be here today. And it is great that so many of you have come. First of all, I would like to introduce myself and my research project. And the first side, personal motivation and research, lecture and doctoral student in psychology, main areas of research, and educational processes in virtual worlds, strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Kendra says I'm a lecturer and doctoral candidate in psychology and research on gender identities and educational processes in virtual worlds. In my real life, I describe myself as non binary, which means that I do not want to classify myself in the strict, in the conventional strictly dichotomous gender system. I had my coming out as a trans woman here in second life. When I logged in almost a year ago, I didn't know what effect this would have on my actions and behavior. Therefore, I decided to deal with the psychology of avatars more intensively in the context of my dissertation. My ambitious goal for today is to show you the basics of avatar psychology in the next 30 minutes. First, we can't cover all the topics in detail. And that's not and shouldn't be my intention. After participating in this panel, you should be able to explain how your behavior as an avatar in virtual space influences your real life. You will learn to better understand your own behavior and that of other avatars. The concepts of avatar psychology will help you to improve your self expression and influence your real life positively. What is an avatar? Well, the term is derived from the Sanskrit word avatara and stands for the descending or also the descent. In Hinduism, it refers to the physical manifestation of an inherently disembodied deity as it descends to earth. For the first time in relation to the experience of digital bodies, the term avatar was used in the novel songs from the stars to refer to apparently monstrous entities in the computer generated experience. And in terms of game characters on the screen for the first time in the role playing game habitat 1985 by Lucasfilm. The term is now used quite widely to refer to representations of users in a range of digital spaces from a screen name or profile image of a social network, animated graphic bodies such as those found in three dimensional video games. Avatars are usually associated as digital embodiments of the self of the human users. Representatives in which a certain dimension or the entire existence of the players appearance, behavior, personality, intention is translated, reinterpreted or transferred to the digital body. An avatar thus represents an associated entity in a digital space that enables the users to navigate and interact in this space. However, an avatar does not always have to human traits, nor does it have to be visual. We can imagine a purely text based or auditory avatar. This brings us to the question of whether an avatar must always be controlled by a human being? The answer is no, it doesn't have to. If the avatar is not controlled by a human, we call him an agent, like agent Smith in the in the matrix by the way. Their distinguishing feature is that they act autonomously as software solutions. Let's agree on the definition that an avatar is a digital representation of human users that facilitates interactions with other users, entities or the environment. I would now like to talk about the attributes of avatars. From attractiveness to uncanny valley, I'm going to take a closer look at the differences of these avatar attributes, because many people spend enormous amounts of time creating their avatar. I will start, not just time, but money by the way, I will start with attractiveness and stereotypes, a major weakness of observation methods in psychological research, that the people who make judgments are subject to evaluation and interpretation processes, as well as assessment standards. This is a cognitive distortion known as the halo effect. It involves inferring from known characteristics to unknown ones. The effect often occurs when a person to be assessed is characterized by prominent pronounced characteristics such as physical attractiveness. Except for the halo, all other characteristics recede into the background, even if they are more significant, pronounced or even negative. Beautiful avatars are considered more competent, intelligent, sympathetic, satisfied and successful because of the halo effect. Next, I would like to introduce the five factor model, also called the big five, and used by many psychologists to describe the character of people. There are five main dimensions to a personality, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, tolerance and neuroticism. Through a stronger expression of one or more of these personality traits, we can make characters more attractive to others. For example, we consider avatars with the personality trait conscientiousness to be orderly, reliable, punctual and disciplined. Although the final word has not yet been spoken about the big five and researchers are considering adding further dimensions, it is still the best approximation to what can be called the basic personality dimensions. The more human traits there are in an avatar, the stronger the psychological connections the higher the physiological excitement and interactions with the avatar. But what if the avatar has no human form, that is, is not anthropomorphic? Let's imagine any object, a rock for example, as shown here in the front, it's not anthropomorphic and doesn't encourage us to interact socially, even though it's very realistically depicted. But if this rock has a face, as in the picture on the right, we would call it anthropomorphic. We can try to talk to it or we can be afraid of it and this brings us to Uncanny Valley. But a Japanese robotics researcher, Masahiro Mori, discovered in 1970 that the perception of humanoid robots in humans did not lead to a uniform increase in familiarity and human acceptance within increasing degrees of human similarity, but that this only applied to a certain degree of human similarity. So how anthropomorphic must a robot look and how should it move? Mori presented the link between familiarity and human similarity as a graph in the sense of mathematical function. From a certain degree of human resemblance, familiar for familiarity and human acceptance, there is a depression in the curve, the Uncanny Valley. This exists not only for robots, but for all artificial but human-like structures such as prostheses, graphics, or human avatars. In addition, the Uncanny Valley increases when objects move. The reason for this is that movement is normally perceived as a sign of life, and robots or avatars that look human and move in a human-like manner are more likely to be perceived as sick people or zombies and cause discomfort. By the way, this may be one of the reasons most commercial service robots have been used in defense until now. We have talked about several important avatar attributes that influence the use and perception of avatars. I hope you will be able to apply the knowledge gained from this to your own appearance. Now let's look at how avatars fit into the psychological concept of self. Psychological research on the self has accumulated new insights for more than a century. The self is the sum of our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Although in my case, my self is the sum of my vices. Many psychologists see the self as a crucial part of our personality. Recent research refers to the influence of the concept of the possible self, the quote of a self that we dream of becoming or are afraid we might become. Possible selves are thus the ideal self, the loved self, the admired self, but also the lonely self, the failed or fearful self. A self could be future-oriented and motivated to become a great scientist, for example. Maybe you are thinking about yourself right now and asking, who am I? Behind this is your self image, which together with the ideal image forms your self concept and is a central feature of your personality. These are the thoughts and feelings which arise in you in response to the question asked before, which is and which are subject to considerable changes in your life. This includes knowledge about personal characteristics, abilities, preferences, feelings, and behavior. People with a positive self concept leave the world in a positive way. While a negative self concept is favored, the further our self image moves away from our ideal self. These self discrepancies often trigger negative emotions and can lead to depression and demotivation. Consequently, an ideal avatar would be desirable if it can be assumed that it represents an attainable ideal. With the help of avatars, we can bring the different selves to the fore and use video games and virtual worlds as perfect laboratories for self experiments. However, research shows that people do not deviate far from who they really are. Most people choose a better version of themselves, even though they have so many different versions of themselves at their disposal. Let's think primarily of social media platforms such as Facebook or dating sites. It is important to note that people behave more like their true self when they communicate virtually than in a face-to-face environment. Here, supposed anonymity plays a decisive role, but more about this later. And Vic chimes in, all kitties think themselves as lions, I think. And as Sissy G remarked, or maybe the lion belongs to a cute little kitty, or rather, it longs to be a cute little kitty. When people encounter mediated entities and messages, they react in a similar way as in the physical world. If a media representation or avatar appears human or behaves in a human-like manner, people will judge and respond to it in a similar way as they would to a human. So why do people choose avatars that fit their self image? Well, because of social homophily, this is the tendency of individuals to like and interact with other people if they are similar to them. People like other people who look or think like themselves. This concept is currently gaining in importance, especially in network research, as it can be used to both induce and analyze the formation of groups, organizations, or networks. The same applies to avatars. People prefer avatars that are similar to themselves. They are considered more credible, more likable. Furthermore, people prefer avatars that represent at least some parts of the self. People also like to be a little better than self avatars. The reason for this is optimization for social goals. The choice of avatar is similar to the choice of outfit. The clothes you choose will help you achieve your social goals. Of course, the available clothing and the contents of your wardrobe are limitations to this, and are the technical options available to me for controlling my avatar. And tagline comments, this is a prescription for tribalism. It does also explain the extreme nature of a lot of Facebook groups. There are many demographic variables, especially in game development, but gender is probably by far the most discussed variable. However, not all game developers are aware of the importance of this factor. I agree with that. For example, they cannot imagine the discomfort that female players feel when they have to play male characters. Given the primitive graphics of early video games, it took several years for game designers to develop human-like representations. With the development of human characters and related plots, it became necessary for designers to create representations with human-like characteristics such as physical and social gender to illustrate these narratives. Let me start by saying that this distinction does not exist in the German language. There, sex is equated with both physical and social gender characteristics. Trans people are those people whose gender identity, gender, does not correspond to their physical gender characteristics, their sex. An example of a game is Baldur's Gate, Siege of Dragon Spearhouse from the Baldur's Gate series. Messina, shown here on the right, is a trans woman who tells the main character that she chose her name after the transition. The figure met with considerable criticism among other aspects of the playwriting. Beamedog, the production company later announced that they were going to expand the character's story a week after the expansion pack was released saying, in retrospect, it would have been better to introduce a transgender character with more development. And Siege remarks, I'd like to represent myself as a concept, but I have trouble finding the right avatar for that, though. It reminds me, when I was in college, I went to a Halloween costume where my costume was just a piece of paper with the words, Glenn Miller's Big Band Sound. And that was my costume, was a concept of Glenn Miller's Big Band Sound. Of course, when perceiving and designing avatars, we must also be aware of the stereotypes and role assignments that have shaped us. These determine our behavior in both virtual and physical spaces. For example, gender specific avatars are expected to have gender specific knowledge. As for avatar voices, children must children trust computer voices that sound female when they talk about princesses and makeup, but male when they talk about dinosaurs and football. It is also more likely that female avatars are more likely to be harassed in virtual spaces, but also more likely to receive help. Some men will choose female avatars to get more attention. But why do most people want their avatar gender to be consistent with their own identity? Because of their own gender identity? Because it improves identification and also facilitates social interaction. Acting differently than you normally feel is difficult and requires a lot of mental energy. In social psychology, cognitive dissonance refers to an emotional state that is perceived as unpleasant. It arises when a person has incompatible cognitions, exceptions, thoughts, opinions, attitudes, desires, or intentions. Therefore, people prefer to simply behave like themselves. I agree with that. I think it's difficult to maintain a non-self identity in second life for any extended period of time. It just is too exhausting. Continuing, but also a sex change is usual. Gender swapping can lead to psychological well-being and identity formation, because not all people find themselves in the gender assigned at birth, but there are also functional motivations. Finally, it is more likely that female avatars are harassed in virtual spaces. In computer games, it has also been found that women played male avatars and outperformed male players. Men use female avatars because they find them more aesthetically pleasing, for example, and not necessarily to establish an identity link with the avatar. I agree with that, too. I've done that. When I've played some RPG games, I like to choose a female avatar just because I'm going to be looking at it for hours and I'd rather look at a female avatar than a male avatar and continuing Kendra's presentation. Now we come to my absolute favorite subject, the Proteus Effect. The name of the concept alludes to the mutability of the Greek god Proteus, a former sea god of Greek mythology. The Proteus Effect describes the phenomenon that a person's behavior in virtual worlds changes depending on the characteristics of their avatar. The reason for this is the knowledge of the behavior that other users of the respective virtual environment typically associate with these characteristics. The Proteus Effect assumes that the visual characteristics of an avatar are related to certain behavioral stereotypes and expectations. If a person believes that others expect certain behaviors from him or her based on the appearance of his or her avatar, he or she will adopt those behaviors. How does the Proteus Effect come about in the first place? Well, the psychological mechanisms are based on the theories of self-perception and priming, and Sue remarks the Proteus Effect is so interesting and also that her avatar has also shaped her behavior in real life at times and I agree with that too. That does happen. The principle of self-perception or self-awareness is the perception of the self of one's own person. We have already talked about this together with self-observation. It is indispensable for the formation of one's own consciousness and self-awareness. In psychology, the self-image is formed by the sum of self-perceptions supplemented by messages from external perception. A fundamental distinction is made between body schema and body image. While the body schema is related to the learning experience and is made up of characteristics such as body orientation, body extension, size, body knowledge, instruction and function, the body image is a psychological phenomenological construct that relates primarily to mental attitudes. It consists of characteristics such as body awareness, body exclusion, the limits of one's own body, body attitude, for example, attractiveness, appearance, evaluation by others, and beliefs. What is meant by priming? Well, in psychology, the term refers to the influence of the processing cognition of a stimulus. In most cases, a preceding stimulus activates implicit memory content. Such a stimulus can be a word, an image, a smell, a gesture, or similar. Which of the two mechanisms has a stronger influence on the produce effect is the subject of further scientific research? By the way, while we are on the subject of priming, I would like to remind you that you will not be eating for another two hours. The waiting time will probably seem much longer now that you've been, now that you've seen the delicious burger in the background. Your avatar isn't just you. He has other qualities. He has avatar-related traits. For example, if you use an attractive avatar or a less attractive avatar, it will affect how close you allow people to be to you in your virtual environment and how attractive your chosen partners are. When I observe my avatar while I control it, I think about these two types of attributes. In psychology, this is called the cognitive schema. If you observe them at the same time, these two cognitive schemata are connected. When using a large avatar, the associated attributes of strength and power are associated with the cognitive schema that I associate with my identity. Another interesting point is that when I control an avatar, the produce effect is stronger than when I only see an avatar on the screen because there is sensor motor feedback through the hand-eye coordination. Again, I would like to point out that a high degree of self-mastery can be observed in virtual communication, which facilitates interaction with other avatars. However, so-called flaming, i.e. provocative and insulting behavior, is also part of the quite normal behavior repertoire in virtual worlds. But what does that mean? Watching my avatar is like watching myself and at the same time combining my personal characteristics with those of my avatar. So when I move in a virtual world, the attractiveness of my avatar is related to my psychological understanding of myself and this changes my behavior in the offline world. If you use a thinner avatar, it will affect your physical activity. You will train more after the virtual experience with the avatar than if you use a heavy avatar. Some people seem to pick up the clues from their avatars about how thin or obese people tend to behave and follow these clues. Let me try that again. People seem to pick up the clues from their avatars about how thin or obese people tend to behave and to follow these clues in their physical activities. For example, if someone uses a larger avatar in a virtual environment, they will negotiate more aggressively in a sales pitch. Studies have also shown the willingness to behave aggressively in a virtual environment was increased among people whose avatars wore black coats. We had already talked about body schema and body image discrepancies between these two can lead to disturbances in self-perception and body experience. I want to interject that I think a lot of men's clothing in Second Life is black. Men's clothing has very few color options. Black or red are really the two main characters for men's clothing. This can lead to distortion, denial, or repression, and thus to self-deception. Examples are the disorders depersonalization and anorexia, which are classified according to ICD-10. Hauses of such disorders are unachieved dreams about how one would like to be, the fear of being discovered, and the shame of not being how one would like to be. The Proteus effect can therefore be used for many things, and you should always be aware of this. As we can all see from the current situation, virtual spaces are becoming increasingly important. Avatars are used, for example, in the fields of visualization and simulation, but also in clinical applications. For example, avatar-based psychotherapeutic consultations are possible, although these are prohibited in some countries due to an outdated and difference-oriented model of computer-mediated communication. In clinical psychology, fantasy products are often described, such as imaginary companions, which have a development promoting function and activate self-healing powers. They can also serve to compensate for deficits in the relationship area or impulse control. We have already heard that the willingness to talk about oneself is increased in internet communication. It is precisely this tendency towards greater willingness to reveal oneself that can be helpful in therapy counseling and coaching process. There are already reference projects for social phobias and eating disorders. In such avatar-based therapies, eating disordered users are shown a more adequate behavior in the virtual world when dealing with food. Let us not forget that virtual spaces are inclusive. They enable people who would not have access to them due to physical or psychological limitations to participate in such measures. The virtual training possibilities are already diverse today and range from simulated conversations to training for police forces. The acquisition of knowledge through the use of 3D virtual reality also offers the opportunity for the individual to actively convert the acquired knowledge into his own thought processes and thereby create new ideas. Complex scientific, technical, or biological medical learning content can be simulated and carried out in a 3D virtual reality with no danger to humans, what Science Circle does every week. Digital learning and working worlds have become an integral part of the life or everyday world of the participating people and include virtual 3D worlds. They can be living in space in which education and socialization take place. The future of virtual learning worlds does not line the possibility of depicting classrooms as realistically as possible, but enabling students to develop team skills and to address issues that they would never have encountered in their familiar surroundings regardless of which part of the world they are in. Even though the learning curve for newcomers is high, Second Life is for me the platform to make educational content accessible to everyone in the world. Next I would like to take a brief look at the mirror neurons and explain to you what this is all about. Mirror neurons vibrate when people pick up something. This can be a tool, a device, a mobile phone, or anything else to get involved with. It is also believed that mirror neurons are responsible for understanding the intentions of others. Intention is a mental state that represents an obligation to perform an action or actions in the future and includes mental activities such as planning or thinking ahead. The mirror neurons may also play a role in the development of empathy and recognition of faces. This is especially important for the appearance of avatars when they meet and exchange information in virtual spaces. Field experiments with Second Life residents showed that after only 10 minutes of virtual face-to-face conversation they built up a bond depending on the shape and movements of an avatar. This leads to trust and trustworthiness of the anonymous avatar and to cooperation. When using voice, phonemes are assigned to the spoken word by means of voice analysis. These phonemes can be assigned to mouth positions so-called vizemes which are then transferred to the avatar in real time. This generates a new level of behavioral realism. Since the spoken word corresponds to the mouth positions of the avatar, because of their basic and broad functions for movement, learning, social interaction and emotion, many scientists regard mirror neurons as hardware of being human. Some believe that they are to psychology what the discovery of the genetic molecule DNA was to biology. And Delia says it's because of mirror neurons that I had people, avatars, digging in the dirt in a garden when I was talking about reconnecting with the earth. And wordsmith points out in dancing in SL I was surprised how strongly my RL kinesthetic memories were activated. Mirror neurons. That's exactly right. People love to dance in Second Life which is just amazing to me. Even people who claim that they, you know, don't like certain things in Second Life because it's just a cartoon or something, even people like that love to dance in Second Life. Not only programs for video conferencing such as Zoom or collaboration platforms such as MS teams are experiencing an increasing number of users in the course of global corona quarantine, Second Life has also experienced an increase in this respect since February of this year, the Linden Lab CEO, Evie Altberg, is therefore convinced of the necessity to implement innovative developments for the benefit of education in Second Life, as I read in a recent interview. Virtual spaces provide the opportunity to work on oneself and one's own personality affected way to constantly reinvent oneself and to test oneself in the context of virtuality. Here you can gather experiences and test and rebuild relationships. The creation of one's own avatar which is provided with fire characteristics can promote personality traits that in real life for whatever reason have little or no chance of being used or allowed to be used. Virtual worlds offer people the opportunity to express themselves and be their true self with the help of other avatars. I would like to encourage you to allow it. And Kendra closes in this sense. I thank you for your attention. Yay. That was very good Kendra. That was so interesting. Very comprehensive. And I also want to thank our students because with the very lively conversation and commentary going on together with that presentation. That was great. You know, just kind of riffing on this a little bit. You know, I did, you know, I do occasionally encounter people in Second Life who, for example, who object to adult activity in Second Life or just are not into that. And yet they, you know, like to have a very attractive avatar, which I think is going to kind of invite harassment in that arena or whatever. And I sometimes suggest, well, you know, you could make, you know, a non-human avatar. You could be a tiny or, I don't know, or be an alien or be an animal or something, a furry, right? But hardly anyone really ever wants to do that. They don't, you know, even though if you're not interested in adult activity, you could have a non-human avatar and hang out in communities that are not into that kind of thing, you know. But very, very few people actually do that. They still, they like to create, you know, an avatar that they personally like, that they personally can relate to, even though it may create social, you know, stresses for them, it's still a very important part of their, of their self-identity. So I just think that's interesting. Bear with me here a moment. So moving along, I do want to, did I do with that? Here we go. So continuing with our program here, our other speaker, Deepi, who also does not use voice, has wanted to present the image that is on the slide, slide, slide viewer now. If you'll return your attention to the slide viewer. Deepi wanted to offer this image as to provoke some discussion. She calls it three bunnies. Note the photo behind me. In the center is a picture of a bunny. It could be a bunny avatar. It's not. It's an animated object. But pretend it's an avatar. Bunnies are fuzzy and everybody loves them. On the left is a really silly but cute bunny outfit I have. See the ears? The outfit is so outrageous that as an avatar, it cannot be anything but wholesome and demure. How about the bunny avatar on the right? That's an approximation of a bunny as created in Playboy magazine in the 1960s. These days, maybe not too cute anymore. So imagine that you meet one of these avatars, Bunny Girl, Bunny Bunny, or Playboy Bunny in Second Life. What is your initial reaction? How would you talk with the bunny? Or rather, what would you talk about with the bunny? Please share your reactions and comments in the text chat. And a tagline says, I would talk carrots, veggies, hypersexuality with the bunny. Mike says, I'd probably talk about chemistry, but that's my obliviousness to others' needs. Sumo says, do you know Gloria Steinem? Cass says, I only love chocolate bunnies. And Vick says, I tend to ignore the avatar and talk to the person. So I think I would react to the Playboy Bunny outfit as being kind of a satire. And Shiloh comments, I wonder how much stereotypes would influence the kind of talk you have with each avatar. And Sizzigie says, it is true that I've been distracted by the avatar at first, but I start homing in on the real person eventually. And I kind of agree with that too, that the more you know someone, the less important their avatar becomes to you. And Aries Peterson says, as a predominantly bunny avatar, I don't know how to feel about this slide. And Mike comments, behind the avatar, there was no way of knowing the person until you engage them in conversation. I sort of agree with that up to a point, but I do think that avatars are a type of personal self expression, and that avatars are intended to communicate publicly something about yourself. And for that reason, I think it's fair to make some assumptions about a person based on their avatar. For example, you might think that they're very creative. Like if they have a really creative avatar, that is sort of non traditional or something, like maybe a Nico type avatar, or a battle avatar for skill gaming or something like that. I mean, I think those presentations, I think that's fair game to make some assumptions about a person and I think people want you to that's why they make their avatar the way they made it because they are trying to communicate something about themselves to you. So Steven asks a question, some perceptions are based on biological archetypes, female nurturing male protector, but some appearance features, black equals bad, white equals good are more social cultural archetypes, but some overlap any commentary on how much playing an opposite identification avatar affects the different perception of those over time for the purpose via the Proteus effect. Also, Vic, I wanted to invite you if you want to chime in on voice along with me, please feel free to do so. Okay, you're doing great. Thanks. Hey, by the way, we arranged for a woman's voice for Deepi. She has some things she'd like to attribute as well. Yes, I was trying to get that sorted out sort of on the fly here, but. Okay, so just let us know when you're ready for that. Yeah, let's do it now. That sounds great. Yeah. Okay, then Deepi, so do you want to do like some kind of a text to this? Actually, we asked Max, she's very well known in Second Life. Yes, I have Deepi's text here. Fantastic. Okay, good. Can you hear me? Yes, we hear you, Max. Thank you. Okay, a virtual world experience is different for everyone who enters it. I've seen a cross-section of reactions when offering optional seminar classes for college students. Some students create an avatar and become quite comfortable participating in class. Others find the experience so foreign that they either are very uncomfortable or decline the opportunity entirely. I think this points out how deeply our perception of self is connected to our physical presence. Our recent times in isolation due to the pandemic has caused a huge increase in the use of Zoom and other conferencing methods. This usage has made people more comfortable with interacting with family and friends from a remote location, where the cues we get from actually being together are not present. It's a step toward using an avatar but not the same as we still see our image in the video and hear our voices. The avatar need not resemble us at all. It can be a non-human form or a human that looked different from our real life. This causes a distinct shift in our body awareness and how we adapt to this shift has strong psychological implications. We'll talk about these shifts at the panel discussion. Yes, thank you, D.P. and Max. I actually would like to home in a little bit on this notion that the use of avatars is a barrier to broader acceptance of virtual world platform, precisely because the psychology of using an avatar interacting with other avatars seems to be weirdly powerful. I can't quite articulate it, but people seem to either just love it and dive in full bore or are repelled by it and simply can't take it seriously. I've had students myself who may be quite shy in normal classroom just suddenly emerge and become very aggressive participants when they get their avatars. It's quite surprising. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that, Max. I've had to do Zoom classes this semester, like a lot of other people. And actually, the people who are very shy, they were very vocal in chat. And a lot of the students actually said that they were able to participate more when we were doing it on Zoom than we did in class. You know, I think this is a similar phenomenon to Facebook groups. I think many of us may be familiar that, you know, you know, we think of, you know, we love our dad, for example. We think our dad is a nice guy and has been a loving father. And then on Facebook, he becomes this like, you know, raging ideologue or something. And it's just full of opinions and stuff. Like he's a different person than we know him at home. So it's not just avatars. There's something weird about computer mediated communication. Speaking of which, actually, that's a good byline into or segue into something I'd like to share a little bit. Let me go back to the beginning here if it's okay with you and talk a little bit about some of the types of things that I found. My name is Phil Youngblood. One of the reasons I'm here is this is, besides this being a fascinating topic is I've been teaching in virtual environments for over 18 years. And my dissertation was on work relationships in mediated or virtual environments. What, hey, I got a question real quick. Let me put that in here is that what have you guys heard about how many females in Second Life are actually male? Anybody got a percentage out there? 80? Well, I've heard quite a few, which I think is interesting. I haven't ever heard anyone actually do a presentation on that. But I've heard that there's quite a bit. By the way, I just have chosen to not change my avatar. In other words, I'm I look the same and wearing the same as I did back when I started in Second Life in 2007. It just hasn't become something that I have done. What I'd like to do is share a few things that I have learned here and also some experiences I had when I first started in Second Life. One of my first experiences was being thrown across a sandbox. Anybody experience something like that? Well, one of my first experiences was being thrown across a sandbox the first week as in Second Life. And I was amazed at my reaction. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about why that might be. First of all, what's the first thing that newbies do when they get in Second Life, including students and stuff? I don't know if you've taught classrooms in Second Life. I've taught quite a few. Well, through a script, you know, bumped into walls, that sort of thing. Okay, trapped. One of the first things I found, yeah, you can't keep them down. They're very interested, very animated. And they start looking at their appearance almost immediately. At least that's what I have found with students are brand new to Second Life. One of the first things they do is try to change their appearance because that's what one of the ways that we present ourselves in Second Life. The other thing, one of my experiences also was, yeah, he went shopping. Okay. So one of the things also is that I invited a graduate class in communications to go into Second Life. But their professor, or hair, decided that the students had to be in opposite gender. So what do you think happened? What do you think happened when people were opposite gender in Second Life? Anger? Well, anger from where? Yeah, a stereotypical thing. What do you think happened to the guys who are now women in Second Life? Yeah, Shontal mentions confusion and frustrated. Well, actually they got hit on. Yeah, there you go. That's what I was just going to say. They probably got harassed. Yeah, they got harassed. And it was a very different experience for them and something I think they learned from. And then the other thing is I went to, I went around different places in Second Life and I visited a mosque. And what do you think they asked me to do in the mosque? First thing. Take your shoes off? Absolutely. Take off my shoes. So there you go. A lot of people know that. Okay. So the idea is take off your shoes. So that's an interesting thing is that when you're talking about in Second Life is that, first of all, I would like to make a premise that we're always an avatar. In other words, our avatar is how we view ourselves and project that to others. So even when we're at home, when we're in any kind of media, we are our avatar. We dress the way we want. We do our hair. In other words, we're different at home than we are at work. We're different in other areas. Okay. So what we see in our mirror, just like the little kitty cat, is not how others see us, but that's how we see ourselves and like to project ourselves and stuff. And so in First Life, we choose clothes, hair, what we could do with our skin, bodies, movements. And that becomes how we like to project ourselves or what we would like to project ourselves. And in Second Life, of course, this year are constraints. So we can be a bunny rabbit. We can be whatever we want. We can be a human. But we can still have a lot of constraints on our size and skin and hair movements and clothing and such like that. And so the other concept is the voice. Here again, we didn't compare any of these slides or concepts. So some of them overlap with the Kendras, but others, like this one in particular with the voice, I found when, yeah, I know, it came in in summer of 2010. I remember very well, because a lot of people still don't like voice because of what it reveals about us. In other words, it's something we may not be able to disguise as well. So for example, somebody put down in chat there, who I am based on my voice. What does my voice reveal about me? While somebody's putting in that, by the way, one of the, yeah, go ahead. I'll just volunteer. I would say that to me, your voice communicates you're maybe middle-aged and that you're educated and that you're basically kindly. So, oh, I sound younger. Okay. Well, that's very nice. My first great-grandchildren child will be born this summer, by the way. So I'm a little past middle-aged. But thank you for the, yeah, thank you for the kind part. I like that. Okay. So any case, yeah, but, you know, as I say, whatever, you're only as young as, you're only as old as you think you are, at least hopefully. Okay. Now, there are a couple other concepts real quick. And I realize that, oh, hey, I like that idea. Okay. So there are a couple other concepts I'd like to present. I realize that we've been in here for about a minute and five is the idea of what's called telepresence versus social presence. Now, these can be defined a little differently, but basically interact, avatars that are interacting with the world, whether you're talking about trees or other people. This is telepresence is how much you believe that you're part of the world around you. So for example, if somebody knocks you into a wall or you hit a building because you haven't learned how to fly, you kind of, you know, feel strange about it, perhaps. And then the other part of it is the idea of social presence. In other words, that's how much you believe that others are in the world with you. And so this can, depending on how much you believe one or the other, it can influence a lot about how you deal with the world. As we know, now, I'm not a, I'm not at all an expert on autism or whatever, but I understand with autism is that there is a, is dealing with the world is a little different than a lot of other people. But the idea is that these, it's not just the 3D world that these extend to. In other words, the idea of telepresence, social presence can extend to first life, social media, virtual worlds. So let me give you an idea and let me ask, if you agree, I'm not an expert in this area. I'm just very interested is in, if you have a very low sense that you're part of the world, then you can more likely treat the world or objects less respectfully. In other words, it's just the game. It's just stuff. It's just whatever. It's just objects. But if you're, but if you really think that you're part of that world as the avatar, then you may be more likely to respect objects as you would in first life and be more responsible. In other words, know that there, somebody has made these or done something with them. And that the world is then made by other people. Now, in social presence, I'm suggesting that if you have a low sense that others are in there, then essentially you treat others as objects or game pieces. Now, here again, like I'm saying is that this can be extended to first life, not just second life and to social media. So for example, in social media, if you don't understand that there are people or don't fully appreciate that there are people behind what people are saying, then you're more likely to make comments which are you would not make in first life. That seems to be kind of touching on like sociopaths or something. If you're, you know, if you have trouble relating to the sort of the reality of other people like a sociopath in real life, that probably is going to translate to the virtual world also. And you'll become a griefer or a troll. Well, that's an interesting, yeah, that's an interesting point is I'm kind of making a presumption here that and actually that's a great segue into this last part is that if you have a high social sense of social presence that there really are other people, the avatar near you is another person. Unless, of course, as Baradon mentions, you are already a sociopath in which case it may actually just make it worse. Okay, so that's kind of my contribution for this discussion. I really enjoyed the discussion a great deal. I learned from both of our other participants from the audience. Well, yes, I agree. I kind of want to circle back to a point you made earlier about that we're always an avatar. What that made me think of is like looking at my social media content, especially my Twitter feed during COVID-19 quarantine and how people are reacting to like sort of being in their pajamas all day at home and not showering for days at a time or something. And this notion that, for example, like, you know, I'm an attorney and for years, I wear a suit when I get up in the morning and I put on a suit, I go to the office. That's my real world avatar, right? But under quarantine, we've dropped that sort of the avatar that we don for going out in public. And we're sort of left stewing with our non-public avatar, our sort of normal self or whatever, our isolated self. And I think a lot of people are finding that to be pretty stressful. Yeah, I'm sitting here in First Life with several days worth of beard growth, which I normally would not do if I were out of the house. Well, all right. What do you think? We have a lot of really lively chatter here going on in the nearby chat, but maybe for purposes of our recording and so forth, should we go ahead and wrap it up for today? We're a little bit over the hour, so. I'm for that. And we can continue. But if Kendra or Dopey has anything more, I'd be interested in that. Yes, likewise. So last call, last call from our panel. Any comments? All right. Going once, going twice. We can certainly continue this discussion in the text chat, but I think maybe for our recording purposes, I'm going to go ahead and gavel the voice session at least to a close. And thanks everyone for attending and for the super lively conversation. And, you know, and be sure to keep the science circle on your calendar because we're actually going to be continuing our programs through the summer, which is a little bit of a new thing. So keep your, keep your Saturdays free for the summer, too. And with that, good night, everyone, or good afternoon and take care. Be safe.