Béatrice S. Hasler

Virtual race transformation reverses racial in-group bias

People generally show greater preference for members of their own racial group compared to racial out-group members. This type of ‘in-group bias’ is evident in mimicry behaviors. We tend to automatically mimic the behaviors of in-group members, and this behavior is associated with interpersonal sensitivity and empathy. However, mimicry is reduced when interacting with out-group members. Although race is considered an unchangeable trait, it is possible using embodiment in immersive virtual reality to engender the illusion in people of having a body of a different race. Previous research has used this technique to show that after a short period of embodiment of White people in a Black virtual body their implicit racial bias against Black people diminishes. Here we show that this technique powerfully enhances mimicry. We carried out an experiment with 32 White (Caucasian) female participants. Half were embodied in a White virtual body and the remainder in a Black virtual body. Each interacted in two different sessions with a White and a Black virtual character, in counterbalanced order. The results show that dyads with the same virtual body skin color expressed greater mimicry than those of different color. Importantly, this effect occurred depending on the virtual body’s race, not participants’ actual racial group. When embodied in a Black virtual body, White participants treat Black as their novel in-group and Whites become their novel out-group. This reversed in-group bias effect was obtained regardless of participants’ level of implicit racial bias. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this surprising psychological phenomenon.

Sociocultural Conventions in Avatar-Mediated Nonverbal Communication: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Virtual Proxemics

We examined whether virtual worlds in which participants interact as avatars could be used as a novel instrument for cross-cultural and intercultural communication research. We explored differences between Asian and European cultures regarding their social spatial behavior (i.e., proxemics) in dyadic avatar interactions. Asian dyads interacted at larger distances than European dyads, which is consistent with the cross-cultural differences typically observed in face-to-face interactions. Mixed-culture dyads did not differ from the European dyads, indicating that Asians were more tolerant regarding the invasion of their personal (virtual) space. Since there is no culturally neutral physical environment, such intercultural interactions could not be studied in the physical world.

Structured and unstructured intergroup contact in the digital age

How online contact can incorporate and enhance the stipulations laid out in the Contact Hypothesis.The differences between structured and unstructured online intergroup contact.The advantages and disadvantages of both structured and unstructured online contact.Assessment of past and present online intergroup contact platforms. Intergroup conflicts are a major scourge across the world, leading to death, injury and pain as well as a huge societal and economic impact. One of the leading theories advocated for conflict resolution and prevention is the Contact Hypothesis (Allport, 1954). According to this theory, contact under certain conditions will create a positive intergroup encounter, which in turn, will reduce prejudice and discrimination, and bring about an improvement in intergroup relations. Although the Internet has become an accessible and pivotal medium of communication there are surprisingly few projects that make use of its potential for bridging between groups in conflict. This article explains how the Internets unique qualities may help overcome the major obstacles inherent in the Contact Hypothesis. In doing so, it differentiates between structured and unstructured online intergroup contact, and provides an analysis of some of the leading online intergroup contact platforms, both past and present. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research in this field.

Designing for Effective Collaboration Experiences in Virtual Worlds

Teams and groups that meet in 3D virtual worlds to work or learn together choose the medium for its distinct features and advantages over other online media. While these advantages are often mentioned by the academic and educational communities, empirical evidence is rare. In this paper we present an extensive empirical study of collaboration in virtual worlds, investigating the design of environment and activities. Our mixed-methods analysis yields new insights on the effective design of collaboration experiences. Based on the findings, we present a set of guidelines for the design of collaboration in virtual worlds and discuss the implications for the design of collaboration in general.

Bots in our midst: communicating with automated agents in online virtual worlds

These days we spend an increasing amount of our time online communicating with automated digital entities. Millions of people spend time in multi-user online games and virtual worlds, where they not only play but also engage in various social activities together. Of particular interest is Second Life (SL): it is a generic platform that enables a virtual world constructed completely by its citizens. The study presented here was conducted in collaboration between AVL and a scholar of online religion (Prof. Gregory Price Grieve of the Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina). In this paper we discuss the methodology of using research bots for surveying a virtual world, and the lessons learned regarding the communicative responses to such entities. Bots in virtual worlds, such as SL, are avatars that are controlled by software rather than by a human operator. Our AVL bots have already taken part in other studies [1], and are available for other researchers upon request. In this study we compare the responses to the bot with responses to a human interrogator asking a single question about their RL religion. We coded participants’ responses in two ways: affective coding and functional-semiotic coding. For affective analysis, responses were coded using the categories “neutral”, “positive”, and “negative”. The functional-semiotic classification was analyzed using Jakobson’s functional-semiotic mode [2,3] which distinguishes among six communicative functions: the referential function is assigned to the context, the emotive function is assigned to addresser (the participant, in our case), the conative function is assigned to addressee (the bot, in our case), the poetic function is assigned to the message, the phatic function is assigned to the contact, and the meta-lingual function is assigned to the code. The bot received 1227 replies from 954 (out of 2480 contacted) avatars; we note that this sample is comparable to the number of subjects in the previously-reported largest-scale case study performed in SL (N = 2094) [4]. Although in our case the number of valid responses is smaller, our method has the advantage of approaching participants in a highly-random fashion, whereas the majority of the subject recruiting to the Bell et al. study [4] was made in traditional channels (mailing list and classified ads), and the number of valid responses obtained by a random placement of kiosks in-world was much smaller (N = 75) than the number of valid responses obtained from randomly approaching participants in world in our case (N = 954). The response rate to the human experimenter was significantly higher (66%) than the response rate to the bot (35%). The human experimenter received slightly more negative responses overall as compared with the bot. The specific pattern of result depends on the way we do the analysis, but the overall trend is consistent. If we take all responses to the human experimenter into account, then the human received significantly more negative responses (N=82, M=74.8, SD=33.0) than the bot (N=767, M=14.1, SD=33.6) and significantly less neutral responses (N=82, M=7.1, SD=22.4) than the bot (N=767, M=67.0, SD=44.3).

Real-time gesture translation in intercultural communication

Nonverbal behavior plays a crucial role in human communication and often leads to misunderstandings between people from different cultures, even if they speak the same language fluently. While translation systems are available for verbal communication, translators for nonverbal communication do not exist yet. We present the conceptual design and an early prototype of a real-time gesture translator using body tracking and gesture recognition in avatar-mediated intercultural interactions. It contributes to the ambitious goal of bridging between cultures by translating culture-specific gestures to enhance mutual understanding. Possible applications of the gesture translator are discussed as a facilitating tool for global business meetings and as a means of technology-enhanced conflict resolution and prevention.

9. The BEAMING Proxy: Towards Virtual Clones for Communication

Participants of virtual worlds and video games are often represented by animated avatars and telerobotics allows users to be remotely represented by physical robots. In many cases such avatars or robots can also be controlled by fully-automated agents. We present a conceptual framework for a communication proxy that unifies these two modes of communication. The users can communicate via their avatar or robotic representation, an autonomous agent can occasionally take control of the representation, or the user and the autonomous agent can share the control of the representation. The transition between modes is done seamlessly throughout a communication session, and many aspects of the representation can be transformed online, allowing for new types of human computer confluence. We describe the concept of the communication proxy that has been developed and explored within the European Union BEAMING project, and describe one of the studies involving the proxy, in which the experimenter was perceived as both a man and a woman simultaneously.

Do Virtual Worlds Support Engaging Social Conferencing

This chapter presents The Virtual World Conference, an online event that brought together top international researchers and pioneers in the fields of virtual worlds, from academia, education, and industry. The authors outline the challenges, successes, and problems of adopting the approach of structuring the global conference into three equidistant major time zones – East, Central, and West – resulting in a 24-h worldwide event. The chapter presents analyses of questionnaires that were completed by attendees, in an attempt to test the central hypothesis that virtual worlds can support engaging and effective social conferencing. We present innovations to be applied for further editions of the conference and close the chapter with suggestions and novel ideas for future virtual world events.

The ShanghAI Lectures: Connecting Continents in Cyberspace

The ShanghAI Lectures project contributes to the fundamental goal of making education and knowledge accessible to a broad interdisciplinary and intercultural audience. Deploying state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology and three-dimensional virtual environments, the project enables students and researchers from all around the globe to learn and work together.