Virtually a Girl: Gender Identification in Second Life

Mitra, Barbara ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4512-466X and Golz, Paul ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8179-3174 Virtually a Girl: Gender Identification in Second Life. Behaviour & Information Technology. ISSN Print: 0144-929X Online: 1362-3001 (Submitted)

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Abstract

The notion of gender is a key part of our identity which affects how we perceive and interact with ourselves and others. With the growth of virtual worlds our avatar becomes our agent, representing our “self” in these worlds. Here we examine the relationship we have to our avatars, in particular their gender. We introduced 46 novice users to Second Life and asked them to complete tasks. Participants were then asked to change the gender of their avatar to continue these tasks. We found that the attitude towards the “changed-gender” avatar was highly correlated with the participant’s real life gender, with females reporting strong feelings of discomfort and awkwardness. Our study indicates that females identify more strongly with their avatars, especially their appearance. Males were more comfortable having avatars that did not resemble their real life selves in terms of gender or appearance. We suggest that this is a natural evolution of the stronger identification of self with image that females reportedly experience.

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