September 10, 2008
Virtual worlds like Second Life came with the promise that all of the limitations of this terrestrial sphere would vanish. Sickly hermits desperately in need of the sun’s rays could live their second and better lives in peace and adapt an avatar that reflected the extent of their own imaginations. The ugly could be good looking, and a cyber-race of hobgoblins could lie down in unity with virtual unicorns… or something like that.
But that’s not exactly how it’s turned out according to a recent study conducted by two social psychologists at Northwestern University. They logged on to There.com, which is like Second Life, only apparently not as good at weeding out nosey-Parker social scientists.
They conducted a “door-in-the-face” (DITF) experiment, which surprisingly has nothing to do with the treatment we like to give religious proselytizers and those guys who want to fix the rate on your gas bill for the next 11 millenniums.
A DITF experiment is one in which the experimenter starts by making an unreasonably large request and then follows it up with a more moderate one. Psychology tells us that a person who is first shocked by an unreasonable request will be more likely to comply with the more moderate one. Hence, if you ask a perfect stranger in a restaurant if you can finish her meal for her, she’ll probably say no, but when you follow that up with a request for a bread roll, well Bob’s your uncle.
Online this meant that the researchers (as clipboard toting avatars presumably) went around asking people to do things that were inconvenient or would take a long time (we won’t bore you with the details as we don’t understand them), and followed these up with more moderate requests.
DITF worked as expected, but researchers noted that there was a difference between the success that white avatars had with the technique and that of dark-toned avatars.
“You would think when you’re wandering around this fantasyland, operating outside of the normal laws of time, space and gravity and meeting all types of strange characters, that you might behave differently,” said one of the researchers. “But people exhibited the same type of behavior and the same type of racial bias that they show in the real world all the time.”
Psychologists said they look forward to further exploration of the online world in their never-ending quest to confirm all of our worst assumptions about human nature.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Ho hum -just more leftist attempts at using “science” to push an agenda. In this case it’s just the same old tired “poor black victim” reverse racism that we’ve heard for years. The highest paying occupation – sports music are dominated by blacks. Oprah is richer than New jersey and our newest president was voted for by millions of whites in spite of the racist Rev. Wright friend and pastor of Obama. In the words of Geradine Ferraro -he wouldn’t be where he is if he we’re black.
The real racism today is the cooperation between the black community and liberalism in forging a unified permanent victimhood for the black community. They have indentured their souls to the democratic left as permenent dependents for permenent nannyism, in spite of the documented destruction to their community by goverment destruction of their families.
It’s not racism -it is free will and choice.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I would have to see the entire study. Reading what was in SD just raised many questions for me. They said the complience was higher if the request came from a light “skinned” avatar. What was the “skin” color of the avatar that was asked to do something? Do these avatars only look like humans or were they fantasy creatures? Interesting, but not enough information.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I have to hand it to Don L, it takes a phenomenal amount of ignorance for someone to actually believe that racism against blacks is dead because a couple of them make more money than you do.
The so-called “highest paying” occupations are also the fewest available and the shortest lived occupations, and usually require no more than a high school education as grounds for hiring. Disadvantaged blacks simply have no other options to turn to, due to the poorly-funded education systems the nation puts them through.
Oprah’s fortunes are merely a product of sponsorship, as her charity towards other people inspires millions to give their thanks and ensure that she continue in her endeavors. And Obama is largely disadvantaged in comparison to his former opponent McCain, based on cash value of their assets alone.
Successful blacks in today’s economy are not uncommon, but certainly more uncommon than successful whites.
As far as the virtual world is concerned, go browse http://www.4chan.org, the internet’s pinnacle of liberalism and execution of free will, for a couple of hours and try to tell me that racism has been phased out. I can assure you that left wing extremists and victimized blacks are entirely different people.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:19 am
As a long time resident of second life (march 2007) I am not surprised by this at all. Avatars are representations of ourself that we adapt at our own taste.
Generally there are two types of human avatars – those who try to ressemble their real self, and those (like me) who makes a young and good looking avatar.
In any case – the people behind the avatars – being real people of course – are the same in any world, and most choose a skin color that represent their real skin color no matter appearance.
This is based on talking with hundreds of people (literally) in this period of time, and even though some people take on other roles in SL than in RL (e.g. role playing as fairies, vampires, killing each others etc, or explore the more erotic sides of SL) most people fall back to being the same in SL as in RL.
That means that you’ll find whatever you find in RL in SL – and in virtual worlds as in real worlds – it’s all about where you go and what company you seek. If you’re a racist – you’ll find equals there, of course the opposite too, if you are a vegetarian – you’ll find that too, basically you’ll find anything in the virtual world that you find in the real world.
There’s no reason to make virtual worlds special or different, the only difference is that you mix people from all countries around the world and all kinds of cultures into one world.
It is this cultural meltingpot that is interresting in SL, and I have close friends there from India, Portugal, Spain, Holland, US, UK, Turky, Canada, US, Sweden, Rumania, Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, Germany and other countries.
After a time you discover that although cultures, religion and regimes are different – people are basically the same all over the planet.
It is here virtual worlds have their strength, learning to know people from all over the world builds down our fear of other countries and cultures, and makes the world a smaller and better place to be.
That’s the beauty of SL – we can learn first hand from people in most countries in the world how it is to live there, what is good and what is bad. This beats feature programs and expert reports any day. I believe that this cultural meltingpot would be good for anyone to experience, it beats pen pals a million times as you don’t only talk a lot but you do things together as well.
Second life isn’t a game – it’s just an alternative reality.