One of the debates you hear about in SL, amongst the educators and in general use, is that magic of presence in SL. Seeing people as well as interacting with them changes things about how we feel about them.A 2006 study by Slater et al shows some interesting results. They basically recreated the Milgram experiment in a virtual environment, but with different aims. They tested some people with a visual interaction, and some with hidden, text only interaction. Think SL compared to ICQ/gChat etc.
By every measure the people administering the shocks to someone they could see were more distressed and less likely to complete the experiment despite knowing the "person" they were shocking was not real than if they were simply interacting in text. In visual contact the responses, although harder to measure quantitatively, included interactions we would characterise as 'real' - showing concern for non-responsiveness, raising the voice if requested and so on.
They go on to consider using virtual environments for tests that are unethical on real people, as this experiment is now - in fact they rewrote the rules on ethics after this one. That's probably not important to most of us however, but gives you some hard ammunition to use against people that are wondering why? Virtual environments that give us visual connections clearly give us better presence and engagement than ones that give us text only connections.
Reference: Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, Swapp D, Guger C, et al. (2006) A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. PLoS ONE 1(1): e39. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000039
1. does this means there is a scientific study that reinforce the opinions some people have about the so called virtual rape, as well mounts an argument against those people that don't treat people decently cause according to them "it is just a game" ?
Posted at 5:29AM on Jun 11th 2007 by TigroSpottystripes Katsu