Effects of Avatar Facial Aggressiveness on Negotiation Behavior: The Moderating Role of Perceived Self-Avatar Similarity in the Proteus Effect

According to the Body Specific Hypothesis and the Proteus Effect, bodily experiences can shape people's cognition and behavior. Yee & Bailenson's study of the Proteus Effect suggested that interaction with avatars may shape people's self-representation in virtual environments and further alter people's social behaviors. However, less is known about whether facial characteristics of avatars influence social behaviors, and whether this effect depends on how similar people perceive the avatars to themselves. This proposed study examines the effect of avatar facial aggressive cues, such as facial width-to-height ratio, on people's behaviors in bargaining tasks, and investigates perceived self-avatar similarity as a potential moderator. A hundred undergraduate male students aged 18-25 will be recruited and randomly assigned to conditions with high facial aggressiveness and low facial aggressiveness. We will vary facial aggressiveness by varying such traits as face waist-to-height ratio, chin width, eyebrows, and nose size. Afterward, we'll leave people a few minutes to get to embody their avatars and to perform a bargaining task: an ultimatum concession bargain with a hypothetical $100 allocation. We will ask participants to offer initial offers in bargaining and end-game concessions. Perceived self-avatar similarity would be assessed using the subscale of Perceived Similarity of the Player Identification Scale (PIS). We will hypothesize that more aggressive people will make more self-beneficial offers in initial offers, make less concessions in bargaining tasks, and perceived self-avatar similarity will moderate the relationship with a higher effect among those with a higher perceived self-avatar similarity. This study may offer further support to the Body-Specificity Hypothesis and the Proteus effect. Furthermore, by exploring the possible moderating effect of perceived self-avatar similarity, this study may help clarify when virtual representations are more likely to shape participants' social behaviors.