Do As We Do, Not As You Think: The Effect of Group Influence on Individual Choices in a Virtual Environment

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world application that enables users to create virtual representations of themselves and interact with other users. SL is increasingly being used to study important psychological questions. The current project sought to replicate within SL Asch’s (1951) classic finding of group influence, in which participants often respond in accordance with choices expressed by other members of a group, regardless of the accuracy of those choices. Participants were given a series of perceptual judgment trials, in which they chose one of three stimulus alternatives that matched the length of a target stimulus. Participants were tested either alone or with three other confederate avatars whose choices were predetermined by the experimenter. On two of the trials, confederate avatars unanimously chose incorrectly before the actual participant made their choice. Results showed that on these trials participants were significantly more likely to choose in accord with the confederate’s choices, relative to participants tested as single avatars. The results generally support earlier research on group influence and extend these findings to a virtual world environment. http://jvwresearch.org Group Influence on Choice 2 The Metaverse Assembled / Apr. 2013 Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Vol. 6, No. 1 1. Background and Introduction Second Life (http://secondlife.com) is a 3-D virtual environment, initially created as an experiment in virtual culture, society and worlds (Carpenter, 2009). SL users create virtual representations of themselves (i.e., avatars) and interact with other avatars in a shared virtual environment. A virtual world, although not completely without its own complications, offers an exciting and novel approach to both research and education. SL in particular offers users the opportunity to create entire environments limited only by the user’s imagination. A virtual world affords novel tools with which to create environments that do not or cannot exist in the real world, which in some cases relieves researchers of constraints and safety concerns often present in the physical world. Accordingly, many studies that are not feasible in real life can be conducted in a virtual world with minimal risk, costs, and complications; an advantage that becomes more prominent as our use of onlinetechnology increases. In order to realize its full potential, however, it is important to establish that a virtual world maintains important psychological similarities to real world situations. It has been suggested that immersing oneself in a virtual world with other individuals present, creates both a sense of ‘presence’ (e.g., the user’s avatar becomes an extension of themself immersed in the virtual environment) as well as a sense of ‘co-presence’ (e.g., the attribution of other avatars as extensions of other human agents and immersed in the same virtual shared space), creating a virtual experience that is in many ways comparable to the real world (Mennecke, Triplett, Hassall, Conde, & Heer, 2011). Although reasonable, the hypothesis that a virtual world gives users a sense of ‘presence’ as an avatar and ‘co-presence’ among other avatars, is ultimately an empirical question, and there have already been a number of studies in this area. One finding illustrating the value of a virtual world for social psychology is a study of virtual interpersonal distance (IPD). The results indicate that IPD phenomenon in the real world also appears in a virtual world, even with respect to differences among gender dyads and eye gaze (Bailenson, Beall, & Blascovich, 2002; Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall, & Loomis, 2001; Yee, Bailenson, Urbanek, Chang, & Merget, 2007). Other research has shown that the amount of IPD to an unknown virtual avatar is similar to the distance normally observed between two human strangers (Bailenson, Blascovich, & Guadagno, 2008). More directly relevant to the issue of ‘presence and co-presence’ are data suggesting that people perceive other avatars as extensions of other people. As an example, Hoyt, Blascovich, & Swinth (2003) conducted a study in which participants were told to perform a task in front of either human-controlled avatars, computer-controlled agents, or alone. Participants in the human-controlled group demonstrated the highest degree of social inhibition, thereby suggesting both the power of social influence on an individual and the extension of another human agent into a virtual avatar. Other research on self-perception has employed the use of what has been termed ‘immersive virtual environment technology’ (IVET), which allows researchers to manipulate the digital representation of an avatar’s appearance and control the avatar’s behavior using preset computer algorithms (Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall & Loomis, 2001; Loomis, Blascovich, & Beall, 1999). Being able to create an avatar that appears any way they wish, participants can also experience what it is like to perceive themselves as a different gender, ethnicity, or age, while interacting in a social situation. This kind of manipulation can prove a valuable assessment tool for a multitude of questions examined by psychologists, pertinent to social perception, empathy, aggression, personality, judgment, and other http://jvwresearch.org Group Influence on Choice 3 The Metaverse Assembled / Apr. 2013 Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Vol. 6, No. 1 social phenomena. Indeed, this area of research has already begun to make some striking contributions to social psychology (Bailenson, Blascovich, & Guadagno, 2008, for a review). Another strategy used to study social perception in a virtual world involves the passive use of avatars. In these studies the participant does not engage as an avatar themselves. Rather, they merely observe or interact with avatars from a real world perspective (i.e., observing avatars on a computer screen). One such study examined the classic obedience phenomenon introduced by Milgram (1963). In the original study, participants were presented with a situation in which they were told to administer shocks to another individual if that person answered incorrectly to a given problem. Participants were told to continue increasing the level of shock with each incorrect response, even when the individual expressed discomfort and pain, or ceased responding altogether. Of course, no real shocks were administered. Nonetheless, the reaction of participants ranged from discomfort to very high levels of anxiety, even though many of these same participants ended up administering the highest level of shock available. This type of study could not be replicated today because of ethical standards of research. The distress participants expressed when believing that their actions injured another human being is now ethically prohibited as an unacceptable risk. As an alternative strategy for examining what remains an interesting question -the degree to which humans obey the commands of another -a recent study replicated Milgram’s basic design and procedure within a virtual world. An avatar, rather than a real person, was the target for shocks administered by real-world participants. Interestingly, even though participants were aware that the individual they were shocking was not real, similar findings of increased anxiety and discomfort were recorded among participants. Of particular interest is that physiological measures (skin conductance and heart rate) indicated higher levels of distress when the avatar being shocked voiced their discomfort and pain than when they communicated solely via text chat (Slater, Antley, Davison, Swapp, Guger, Barker, Pistrang, & Sanchez-Vives , 2006). Studies of this type illustrate how a virtual world can offer many new research opportunities that are not possible, for various reasons, in real world situations. In order to better understand the possibilities and limitations of using SL and similar platforms to study psychological questions, more research is needed on the degree to which there is phenomenological symmetry between real world and virtual world situations. Our present study was intended to contribute to that objective. We attempted to replicate a basic finding from social psychology. In his classic study of social influence, Asch (1951) found that a significant number of participants would respond according to choices expressed by other members of their group, despite the fact that these answers were incorrect. A significant amount of pressure to conform occurs when the group is composed of three or more other people and others in the group are unanimous. Larsen, Triplett, Brant & Langenberg (1979) attributed the tendency of external members to conform as a learned behavior encouraged by social rewards. Our study sought to replicate Asch’s (1951) social influence study in a virtual world. Specifically, we examined whether SL participants would conform to the group’s choices when placed in a group situation and asked to perform alongside other avatars in perceptual judgment task, regardless of choice accuracy. http://jvwresearch.org Group Influence on Choice 4 The Metaverse Assembled / Apr. 2013 Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Vol. 6, No. 1 2. Method