Racial prejudice in virtual worlds

SOCIAL EXPERTS claim that real-world behaviours and racial biases are carrying on into virtual worlds such as Second Life.

The study showed that virtual world avatars respond to social cues in the same ways that people do in the real world.

It looked at the virtual world There.com and users were approached by a researcher’s avatar for the experiment.

The first question was asking if the researcher could take a screenshot of the person followed by a moderate request about teleporting to the beach. The other technique involved asking a daft question followed by a more moderate request.

When the researcher's avatar was dark skinned the results were different when the difficult request was made. There was more than a 20 per cent increase in compliance with the moderate request; however, the increase for the dark-toned avatars was eight percent.

Apparently this goes to prove that punters in virtual worlds are more uncomfortable with minorities and are less likely to help them.

Paul Eastwick, who conducted the study at the Northwestern University, said that interactions among strangers within the virtual world are very similar to interactions between strangers in the real world.

Even when people are walking around a fantasy land they exhibit the same type of behaviour, and the same type of racial bias, that they show in the real world all the time, he said. µ

L'Inq
IT News