Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Find Racial Bias In Virtual Worlds
schliz writes "Real-world behaviours and racial biases could carry forward into virtual worlds such as Second Life, social psychologists say. According to a study that was conducted in There.com, virtual world avatars respond to social cues in the same ways that people do in the real world. Users, who were unaware that they were part of a psychological study, were approached by a researcher's avatar for either a 'foot-in-the-door' (FITD) or 'door-in-the-face' (DITF) experiment. While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took the form of a dark-skinned avatar."
You're just saying that because I'm blue...
I had never heard of the Foot-In-The-Door experiment or Door-In-The-Face experiments before reading the article. Turns out they are actually very interesting and clever experiments which reveal behavioral tendencies the explanation of which is plausably related to how a person sees themselves (in the FITD case) or how they see others (in the DITF case).
In a nutshell, if someone makes a small request of you that you are likely to agree to, then you will be more likely to agree to a second, larger request, because you will have seen yourself as being helpful in complying with the first request and want to continue being helpful by complying with the second request.
And, if someone makes a large request of you, a request so onerous that most people would not accept it, then you will be more likely to agree to a smaller second request, to a greater extent than you would have had you not been asked the first, more onerous request. The explanation for this is that you are trying to reciprocate on the asker's reducing the size of their request by increasing your willingness to respond to a request beyond what your base level would otherwise be. It's a kind of a subconscious negotiation process that you are engaging in with someone else, basically meeting them halfway.
However, this second scenario is affected by how worthy you subconsciously believe that the other person is of this kind of negotiation (the first scenario is not because your response is affected by how you see yourself, not how you see the asker). And apparently, if you perceive the other person as being unworthy of this kind of negotiation, then you are less likely to meet them halfway and agree to the second request.
OK, so, this article basically says that darker-skinned avatars in virtual worlds essentially are less likely to be met halfway, ostensibly because, on average, they are perceived as being less important than lighter-skinned avatars.
I don't think it should come as a surprise to anyone that people's racial biases are carried through to a virtual world from the real world. So in a sense, this whole article, aside from being informative about some interesting psychological tests and their results, is kind of one big 'no duh'.
What would be really interesting to know is if, in these situations, there is a greater degree of this kind of bias in one race or socioeconomic class than another, or if it's universal.
Also, I would just like to point out that racial bias does not necessarily mean racism. I personally believe that racial bias is a natural part of the human psyche, and as long as it is recognized, and understood, and does not adversely disadvantage any particular group of people, should be accepted. But that's just me.
A relatively interesting experiment, no doubt, but the article didn't answer a lot of obvious and relevant questions.
First, how big was the sample size? Everything is given as percentages and we all know how meaningless they can be if the number of people tested is small.
Second, what is the racial demographic of the users on There.com? There are plenty of parts of the world, e.g. Russia, where racism (in particular against black people) would not come as a surprise to anyone. If the demographic is primarily American or European then it would be slightly more surprising.
Third, and this is just curiosity, how many people actually complied with the first (totally unreasonable) request in the DITF experiment?
apterous.org
I saw a TV program that demonstrated that people are more likely to help an injured jogger if he is wearing the same team's football shirt. It is not necessarily racist
Isn't that caused by the fact that those virtual world avatars are controlled by people in the real world?
I have both light-skinned and dark-skinned characters in Guild Wars. I'd say I regularly get called a noob regardless of skin color. )=
You make a stupidly large request, followed by a reasonable one, to a stranger. There is a statistical difference in response depending on whether you are in a light or dark skinned avitar.
Researchers conclude that in first case it's because it's how you view yourself and second case it's how you view others and there is racial prejudice. Sounds like psychobabble to me.
Couldn't it be more like, "wow this stranger made a request that would take 2 hours of my time, then asked for 2 minutes... hmmm do I (consciously or subconsciously) find their avitar attractive enough to risk wasting time with a potential nutjob?"
TFA doesn't say who the target audience is, but I'm guessing mostly light skined avitar ppl who might just have a statistically higher attraction to ppl of lighter skins. What if they tried this test using ugly light skinned avitars and @#$%ing hot dark skinned avitars? I think they would have to rethink their conclusions.
Instead of the Foot-In-The-Door experiment or Door-In-The-Face experiment, you have the Gank-the-N00b experiment and the Give-Gold-And-Items-to-Hot-Female-Night-Elves-Who-Are-Really-Men experiments.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took the form of a dark-skinned avatar.
Okay, black vs white. Easy enough. It makes sense that people's IRL biases would carry over to the online world - You can see that clearly enough with gender, where having an even remotely female-sounding name results in far more attention (sometimes unwanted) and deferential behavior than a neutral or male name.
But what about anthropomorphic animal avatars (furries)? What about blue-skinned humanoids? What about amorphous purple blobs? This study had the potential to reveal so much more, yet they limited it to merely demonstrating online what we already knew from the real world. Pity.
That's where my curiosity lies. If they're taking the time to do this, it's all fine and dandy that they can say white avatars get 20% compliance for DITF, whereas black avatars get only 8%; however, I think it's important to note the color of the User's avatar, as well as the gender. Were User's with white avatar's MORE or LESS biased against black avatars? What about User's with black avatar's? How about User's with a female avatar? Were they more likely to give compliance, or less? Were the researcher's Avatars always male, or did they use equal white/black/male/female? I would guess that any female avatar would be more likely to get compliance, as men are still chivalrous, for the most part, and will comply with a woman when they wouldn't with a man. I think that this would have been important to note. In our world, racial/gender bias can be presumed to exist without much difficulty; we all know it's there. However, I think it would very interesting to see whether it was a cross-cultural or cross-gender phenomenon, and not just that it exists. Also, I've known just as many black people that were more suspicious of a black man than of a white man! Normally that has come from those that grew up in, shall we say, less-than-upscale areas, and who have dealt with bad male role models, etc. I think the experiment was interesting, but pointless without more depth. Proving the existence of racial bias, even VIRTUAL racial bias, is a lot like trying to prove that the majority of people enjoy sex. It's more of a "No, really?!"
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
"virtual world avatars respond to social cues in the same ways that people do in the real world"
This phrase made me lol. Though I understand it's a metonymy, I choose to nitpick this fine morning, so there.
Avatars can't respond to anything, being representations. But people respond to representations in much the same ways as to the represented. So, to fix the phrase: "People respond to representations of social cues through avatars in virtual worlds in the same ways people respond to social cues." The claim has this "duh" quality. There is a reason those things are called "representations": they represent something for humans. We react to a video, a story or a picture of a love scene or a murder scene in ways similar to our reactions to the real thing, if weaker. All culture, from casual conversations (word representations) to art in any media is based on that premise. Why would the Second Life be any different?
Years ago, I attended a community Labor Day parade. I wore a bright orange T-shirt with the word "STAFF" across the back. Worked wonders for gaining access to areas off-limits to ordinary "unwashed masses" folks. Social engineering can be entertaining.
Entertaining, yes... so I figure you"ll appreciate this. http://improveverywhere.com/2006/04/23/best-buy/
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
For anyone interested, look up the recent posts of Thufir. He's nothing but a Vanilla Neo-Nazi. I have to say, I'm almost amused by the logical contortions Neo-Nazis create to justify their bigotry. They've created some interesting new definitions because they couldn't defend their old definitions. Just in this post, I see brand new definitions for:
Racism (Racially Biased)
White race (organism)
Lynching (helping your own race first)
Nice work, ass-pirate.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.