The study of ethnic attitudes during interactions with avatars in virtual environmentsстатья
Информация о цитировании статьи получена из
Web of Science
Статья опубликована в журнале из списка Web of Science и/или Scopus
Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 8 сентября 2018 г.
Аннотация:Modern technologies provide wide opportunities for studying various social phenomena. One such technology is the virtual environment, which can be used to explore the spatial behavior during communication. We used CAVE virtual reality technology to study proxemic distances during interaction with virtual partners – so-called avatars. The goal of the experiment was to identify the characteristics of establishing interpersonal distance during respondents’ interaction with avatars, whose appearances corresponded to the appearances of different ethnic groups. The participants were immersed into an environment representing a room with three avatars of the same ethnicity. Three virtual scenes were constructed, each containing three avatars associable with one of ethnic groups – Slovenian, Caucasian and Middle-Asian. The participants were instructed to keep in mind as many details of the avatars' appearance as they could. During the task execution the distance between the participant and the avatars was registered. After leaving the virtual environment, the identification accuracy of the avatars' appearance details and the Presence effect were measured. The interpersonal distancing behavior was analyzed for the area around the direction of mutual gaze. The results showed that the participants preferred maintaining shorter interpersonal distances between themselves and the avatars with the same ethnic appearance. During the interaction with avatars with the ethnic appearances of out-groups, significantly larger interpersonal distances were preferred. Also, a significant correlation was found to exist between the interpersonal distance and the Presence effect measurements.