engleski

The Psychology of Avatars: Real Life Effects of Virtual Communication

Avatars have became the major forms of media access to virtual environments. The characteristics and perception of avatars are related to the sense of presence in virtual environments. Understanding the communication and social action between users and avatars, referred to as "avatar-mediated communication" (amc), as well as its potential effects, is therefore a key issue for presence research. This panel brings together distinct, yet complementary research on the creation and perception of avatars in virtual environments and video games. The first paper addresses the importance of measuring the users' avatar-perception for presence research. The second paper introduces an architecture for the inducement of facial gestures of avatars. The study presented in the third paper addresses how virtual representations influence the users' self-concept in video games. The fourth paper investigates the influence of task structure and life satisfaction on the process of avatar creation in video games.

avatars; avatar-mediated communication; anthropomorphism; realism; avatar characterics; facial gestures; self-concept; life satisfaction; avatarcreation; video games

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