Health Avatars

This page will highlight the new innovations in health avatars as a means to induce positive ageing and increase future self-continuity (FSC). Using avatars as a means to induce a certain behaviour in a user is a new and ever growing field. Researchers have employed the same methods to influence user behaviour in relation to ageing and perception of ageing.

Applications that use Avatars to Infulence Behaviour

World of Warcraft, 2007

Yee & Bailenson in 2009 explored how participants who embodied large and attractive avatars within the game, displayed enhanced game play.

Second Life, 2016

A 2017 found that users who embodied a stereotypical office worker avatar displayed decreased creativity within the game.

Mozilla Hubs Chat Room

A study conducted in 2023 found that participants embodying the attractive non-humanlike avatar perceived higher levels of avatar identification which increased social participation.

Future You

Future You is an interactive experience for cultivating self-reflection and long-term. This application allows users to engage with their virtual self to nurture personal growth.

Avatars and Behaviour Changes- The Proteus Effect

Current research has been focusing on how customizing and operating a digital body or avatar can influence user behaviour and self-perception. There are many important elements at play when a user is embodying an avatar.

The first phenomenon at play is the Proteus Effect. The Proteus effect was first coined by Yee and Bailenson (2007). The research looked at how people adapt their behaviours in accordance with the appearance or traits of the embodied avatars within virtual worlds. The study postulated that people who embodied attractive (vs. unattractive) avatars displayed increased confidence and openness. Similarly, participants who were embodying taller avatars displayed increased boldness. Other research has focused on how the Proteus effect whilst embodying a certain type of avatar can be applied to age (e.g., Hershfield et al., 2011; Reinhard et al., 2020;), race (e.g., Ash, 2016), and gender (e.g., Palomares & Lee, 2010).

There are many positive outcomes when it relates to avatar embodiment. One being increased future self-continuity. Future self-continuity is the sense of connection between one’s current and future self (Hershfield, 2023). By increasing user’s connectedness to their future self, they could make better choices for their future. A study conducted by Hal Hershfield focused on how using age progressed avatars can influence connectedness to future self and enhanced future planning.

Yee and Bailenson (2007) stated that self-perception drives the Proteus effect. Whereas Peña et al. (2009) would say that automaticity drives the Proteus effect as the avatar’s appearance can incite learned bias’, stereotypes, and behaviours for the users. This study found that participants with avatars who were dressed in a black cloak expressed more aggressive attitudes than users who were assigned avatars in white cloaks (Peña et al., 2009). Ratan and Dawson (2016) proposed that self-relevance was the main driving force behind the Proteus effect. It was theorised that using an avatar can elicit associations between a user’s perception of self and the embodied avatar’s characteristics. In essence, avatar self-relevance refers to the extent in which a user perceives the avatar as relevant to the self (Ratan and Dawson, 2016). An example of which can be seen in their study whereby women who used same-sex avatars show increased self-relevance.

Hershfield, H. (2023). Your future self: How to make tomorrow better today. Hachette UK.

Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of marketing research, 48(SPL), S23-S37.

Peña, J., Hancock, J. T., & Merola, N. A. (2009). The Priming Effects of Avatars in Virtual Settings. Communication Research, 36(6), 838–856. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650209346802

Ratan, R. A., & Dawson, M. (2016). When Mii is me: A psychophysiological examination of avatar self-relevance. Communication Research, 43(8), 1065-1093.

Reinhard, R., Shah, K. G., Faust-Christmann, C. A., & Lachmann, T. (2020). Acting your avatar’s age: effects of virtual reality avatar embodiment on real life walking speed. Media Psychology, 23(2), 293-315.