The Proteus Paradox (30 page)

15
. The overlap percentage
U
between two samples can be calculated based on the effect size
d,
as described in: J. Cohen,
Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences
(Mahwah, NH: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988). For the data here, I used the effect sizes from the data in Yee, “Motivations for Play in Online Games.” The effect size for the Mechanics motivation was r = .24. The average effect size across all 10 motivations was r = .12. These convert to effect size d as .49 and .25, respectively. The distribution overlap percentages were then estimated based on these effect size metrics. For the data from Williams, see Consalvo, Caplan, and Yee, “Looking for Gender.” The effect size
d
can be calculated based on the means and standard deviations reported in table 1, resulting in d = .44. Hyde's argument can be found in Janet Shibley Hyde, “The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,”
American Psychologist
60 (2005): 581–592.

16
. This analysis uses data reported in Yee, “Demographics, Motivations and
Derived Experiences.” Variance explained can be estimated by squaring the effect size metric
r.
The effect size
r
for gender in the Achievement motivation is .26, while effect size for age is .33. The resulting variances explained are .07 and .11, respectively.

17
. This phenomenon is incredibly consistent across time and games. For early data from
EverQuest
players, see
http://nickyee.com/eqt/genderbend.html
. For recent data from
World of Warcraft
players, see Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mike Yao, and Les Nelson, “Do Men Heal More When in Drag? Conflicting Identity Cues between User and Avatar,”
Proceedings of CHI 2012
1 (2012): 773–776. This phenomenon was also reported in early text-based virtual worlds: Amy S. Bruckman, “Gender Swapping on the Internet,”
Proceedings of INET
(Reston, VA: Internet Society, 1993). For the post on the Daedalus Project, see:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001369.php
. When the gender disparity of gender-bending is brought up, it is often framed from the male perspective: Why do men gender-bend so much? This perspective assumes that veridicality is the norm and that men are somehow breaking this norm. It bears pointing out that this may be the less fruitful of the two options. From a feminist perspective, there would, on the surface, seem to be good reasons for women to gender-bend—to reject the objectification of female bodies. On the other hand, the need to reject your own biological sex to feel comfortable in a social space highlights a core problem in these online games for women. In either case, the question we should be asking might be: Why is gender-bending among women so uncommon in online games?

18
. Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Les Nelson, and Peter Likarish, “Introverted Elves and Conscientious Gnomes: The Expression of Personality in World of War-craft,”
Proceedings of CHI 2011
(2011): 753–762.

19
. Jesse Fox and Jeremy N. Bailenson, “Virtual Virgins and Vamps: The Effects of Exposure to Female Characters' Sexualized Appearance and Gaze in an Immersive Virtual Environment,”
Sex Roles
61 (2009): 147–157.

20
. Langdon Winner,
The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 21–22.

21
. See Marybeth J. Mattingly and Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Gender Differences in Quantity and Quality of Free Time: The U.S. Experience,”
Social Forces
81 (2003): 999–1030; and Lyn Craig and Killian Mullan, “Parental Leisure Time: A Gender Comparison in Five Countries,”
Social Politics
(2013), doi: 10.1093/sp/jxt002. For examples of how guilt is used in advertising directed at women, see Katherine J. Parkin,
Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

22
. The anecdote from the Difference Engine Initiative reported in Stephanie Fisher and Alison Harvey, “Intervention for Inclusivity: Gender Politics and Indie Game Development,”
Loading . . . Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association
7 (2013): 25–40. Gabrielle Toledano, “Women and Video Gaming's Dirty Little Secrets,”
Forbes,
January 18, 2013,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswomanfiles/2013/01/18/women-and-video-gamings-dirty-little-secrets/

1
. Lindsy Van Gelder, “Strange Case of the Electronic Lover,”
Ms.
14 (1985): 94, 99, 101–104, 117, 123, 124.

2
. T. L. Taylor,
Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 52. Pew Internet survey results from M. Madden and A. Lenhart, “Online Dating,”
Pew Internet and American Life Project
(2006), available at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Online-Dating.aspx
. Online relationships formation statistics from M. Rosenfeld, “Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary,”
American Sociological Review
77 (2012): 523–547.

3
. See the following surveys of online relationships: Nick Yee, “The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments,”
Presence
15 (2006): 309–329; Nick Yee, “Love Is in the Air,”
The Daedalus Project
(2006):
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001528.php
; and Helena Cole and Mark D. Griffiths, “Social Interactions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games,”
CyberPsychology and Behavior
10 (2007): 575–583.

4
. Some guilds span multiple online games, and members can thus remain in the same guild even when they're playing a different game.

5
. Todd Krieger, “Love and Money,”
Wired,
March 9, 1995.

6
. See Russ V. Reynolds, J. Regis McNamara, Richard J. Marion, and David L. Tobin, “Computerized Service Delivery in Clinical Psychology,”
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice
16 (1985): 339–353; Malcolm R. Parks and Kory Floyd, “Making Friends in Cyberspace,”
Journal of Communication
46 (1996): 80–97; Yee, “Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences”; and Joseph B. Walther, “Computer-Mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction,”
Communication Research
23 (1996): 3–43.

7
. Susan M. Wildermuth and Sally Vogl-Bauer, “We Met on the Net: Exploring the Perceptions of Online Romantic Relationships Participants,”
Southern Communication Journal
72 (2007): 211–227.

8
. Katelyn Y. A. McKenna and John A. Bargh, “Plan 9 from Cyberspace: The Implications of the Internet for Personality and Social Psychology,”
Personality and Social Psychology Review
4 (2000): 57–75.

9
. Mark Seal,
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor
(New York: Viking Adult, 2011).

10
. Bruno Bettelheim,
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 69.

11
. Eli J. Finkel et al., “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science,”
Psychological Science in the Public Interest
13 (2012): 3–66.

1
. Linden Labs, “Factsheet: The Technology behind the Second Life Platform,”
http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/general/factsheets/technology
.

2
. Charles A. Nelson, “The Development and Neural Bases of Face Recognition,”
Infant and Child Development
10 (2001): 3–18. See also Carolyn C. Goren, Merrill Sarty, and Paul Y. K. Wu, “Visual Following and Pattern Discrimination of Face-Like Stimuli by Newborn Infants,”
Pediatrics
56 (1975): 544–549.

3
. Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield Walster,
Interpersonal Attraction
(Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Also see James Shanteau and Geraldine F. Nagy, “Probability of Acceptance in Dating Choice,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
37 (1979): 522–533.

4
. Jerry M. Burger et al., “What a Coincidence! The Effects of Incidental Similarity on Compliance,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
30 (2004): 35–43.

5
. See Experiment 2 reported in Jeremy N. Bailenson, Shanto Iyengar, Nick Yee, and Nathan A. Collins, “Facial Similarity between Voters and Candidates Causes Influence,”
Public Opinion Quarterly
72 (2008): 935–961.

6
. Our first study used undergraduate students and less well known political candidates: Jeremy N. Bailenson, Philip Garland, Shanto Iyengar, and Nick Yee, “Transformed Facial Similarity as a Political Cue: A Preliminary Investigation,”
Political Science
27 (2006): 373–386. Then we followed up with three studies using nationally representative voting-age US citizens in Bailenson, Iyengar, Yee, and Collins, “Facial Similarity between Voters and Candidates.”

7
. Jeremy N. Bailenson et al., “The Use of Immersive Virtual Reality in the Learning Science: Digital Transformations of Teachers, Students, and Social Context,”
Journal of the Learning Science
17 (2008): 102–141.

8
. Valins's bogus heartbeat study is reported in Stuart Valins, “Cognitive Effects of False Heart-Rate Feedback,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
4 (1966): 400–408. For the original formulation of self-perception theory, see Daryl J. Bem, “Self-Perception Theory,” in
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,
vol. 6, ed. Leonard Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1972), 1–62.

9
. Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron, “Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction under Conditions of High Anxiety,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
30 (1974): 510–517.

10
. Mark G. Frank and Thomas Gilovich, “The Dark Side of Self and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
54 (1988): 74–85.

11
. The seminal paper linking attractiveness with positive perceptions is Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster, “What Is Beautiful Is Good,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
24 (1972): 285–290. The large meta-analytic review of hundreds of papers on attractiveness is reported in Judith H. Langlois et al., “Maxims
or Myths of Beauty? A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review,”
Psychological Bulletin
126 (2000): 390–423. The jury sentencing example comes from Harold Sigall and Nancy Ostrove, “Beautiful but Dangerous: Effects of Offender Attractiveness and Nature of the Crime on Juridic Judgment,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
31 (1975): 410–414.

12
. See study one in Nick Yee and Jeremy N. Bailenson, “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior,”
Human Communication Research
33 (2007): 271–290.

13
. For an example of a study that links height with perceived competence, see Thomas J. Young and Laurence A. French, “Height and Perceived Competence of U.S. Presidents,”
Perceptual and Motor Skills
82 (1996): 1002. The large-sample regression model of the impact of height on income is reported in Timothy A. Judge and Daniel M. Cable, “The Effect of Physical Height on Workplace Success and Income: Preliminary Test of a Theoretical Model,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
89 (2004): 428–441. The exact estimated impact of each inch of increase in height on annual earning is $789 (435).

14
. See study two in Yee and Bailenson, “Proteus Effect.”

15
. Nick Yee, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut, “The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior,”
Communication Research
36 (2009): 285–312.

16
. For retirement savings estimates, see Diana Ferrell et al.,
Talkin' 'bout My Generation: The Economic Impact of Aging US Baby Boomers
(McKinsey Global Institute, 2008); and Ruth Helman et al.,
The 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey: Job Insecurity, Debt Weigh on Retirement Confidence, Savings
(Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2012).

17
. Hal E. Hershfield et al., “Increasing Saving Behavior through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self,”
Journal of Marketing Research
48 (2011): S23–S37.

18
. Jesse Fox and Jeremy N. Bailenson, “Virtual Self-Modeling: The Effects of Vicarious Reinforcement and Identification on Exercise Behaviors,”
Media Psychology
12 (2009): 1–25.

1
. The four papers generated from the early PlayOn data were Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert Moore, “Alone Together? Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Games,”
Proceedings of CHI 2006
(2006): 407–416; Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert Moore, “Building an MMO with Mass Appeal: A Look at Gameplay in World of Warcraft,”
Games and Culture
1 (2006): 281–317; Dmitri Williams et al., “From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft,”
Games and Culture
1 (2006): 338–361; and Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert Moore, “The Life and Death
of Online Gaming Communities: A Look at Guilds in World of Warcraft,”
Proceedings of CHI 2007
(2007): 839–848.