Real-world stereotypes continue to exist in virtual worlds

May 6, 2015

The researchers used six different avatars to study reactions to help requests among 2,300 players of the online game, World of Warcraft. The avatars represented male and female creatures across three different levels of attractiveness. (credit: © World of Warcraft/Blizzard Entertainment)

Stereotypes related to gender and appearance that burden women in the real world could follow them into virtual ones, according to Penn State researchers.

In a study of how people interacted with avatars in an online game, women received less help from fellow players than men when they operated an unattractive avatar and when they used a male avatar, said T. Franklin Waddell, a doctoral candidate in mass communications at Penn State.

Waddell said the findings, which were released in the recent issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, are similar to those in previous research on how appearance stereotypes affect men and women in the real world. There, women are more likely to suffer negative consequences based on their appearance than men are, he said.

“Overall, many of the same gender and sexual stereotypes seem to permeate the online worlds,” Waddell said. “The study supports the idea that our responses to stereotypes and norms follow us from real life into virtual environments.”

In another finding, players were less likely to help a woman who controlled a male avatar than a man who controlled a female avatar.

“Businesses often want to provide employees and customers with as many technological options as possible,” said Waddell. “However, if business people are going to use avatars to interact with each other or with customers, they may want to use avatars that are gender neutral, for example, or they risk bringing all of those stereotypes from the real world into their online environments.”

The researchers used six different avatars to study reactions to help requests among 2,300 players of the online game, World of Warcraft. The avatars represented male and female creatures across three different levels of attractiveness. Prior to this study, participants had evaluated the levels of attractiveness as high, medium and low.


Abstract of It’s Not Easy Trying to be One of the Guys: The Effect of Avatar Attractiveness, Avatar Sex, and User Sex on the Success of Help-Seeking Requests in an Online Game

Interactions in online environments are influenced by many of the same gender and sex-role stereotypes that people use in offline interactions. However, less research has examined systematically how the traits of an avatar and the avatar’s user interact to influence stereotypical responses in virtual spaces. A field experiment manipulated avatar attractiveness, avatar sex, user sex, and favor difficulty to measure responses to a requested favor across 2,300 interactions in an online game. Attractive avatars received more help than less attractive avatars, but female users received less help than male users when represented by avatars that were less attractive or male.