New research out of Northwestern University indicates that racial biases crop up even in virtual worlds. They showed that the race of an experimenter’s avatar (at least in the door-in-the-face technique) makes a difference in how people act.
Why is the National Science Foundation spending money to investigate virtual worlds? Well, millions of people are already wastingspending billions of dollars in these alternate realities, and we really don’t know much about the sociological or psychological dynamics within them. A couple weeks ago, I actually had a barely worth-mentioning discussion (in real life) with Johnny Sagan about the future of Second Life, There.com (where this experiment was conducted), etc.
The basic argument was whether people really would spend more and more time in these virtual worlds as years went by. He said yes, they allowed people to live in what is essentially a waking dream and be incredibly creative, and that’s too enticing to not do. (Apologies to Johnny for oversimplifying in the cause of brevity.) I don’t entirely disagree, but I still think there’s no way to predict whether Second Life will become a key part of everyday life (like email), a significant but not dominant activity (Facebook), or a very successful niche product (like World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons before it). I just see too much desiret for authenticity, even among people who aren’t part of the vast cultural elite liberal conspiracy. Regardless, these things clearly aren’t going to go away, and it’s well worth studying them.
