The Proteus Effect describes how individuals’ attitudes and behaviour conform to those of the avatar they play as in virtual reality (Yee and Bailenson 2007; 2009; Waggoner 2009; Yee et al. 2009; Montola 2011). Participants assigned taller avatars behaved more confidently in a subsequent non-virtual negotiation task than participants assigned shorter avatars, in line with the behaviour of taller individuals. Imaginatively taking on a different identity and set of attitudes seemed to result in some temporary acquisition. Call this process imaginative contagion. Analogous contagion occurs amongst videogame players and theatrical actors. Players retain ways of thinking, impulses, physical reflexes, and even expectations that things will function as they did in-game (Ortiz de Gortari et al. 2011; 2014; 2015a; 2015b). Actors form habits of thinking and acting like characters they play (Rule 1973; Geer 1993; Burgoyne, Poulin and Rearden 1999; Bailey and Dickinson 2016).
Imaginative contagion generates a concern about our acquiring immoral attitudes and behaviours from avatars and characters we play as. When we imaginatively take on troubling identities and perspectives, these might persist and bleed into our day-to-day lives. I first explain how imaginative contagion occurs, before indicating two mental processes which prevent our acquiring explicitly immoral attitudes, yet may allow acquisition of more subtly pernicious attitudes and behaviours. First, we often resist imaginatively adopting particularly immoral attitudes – a phenomenon discussed extensively in aesthetics regarding our engagement with morally deviant fictional worlds – precluding the possibility of contagion. Second, we often imaginatively adopt problematic attitudes yet keep them quarantined to the imagination. I illustrate how interactive and immersive contexts, such as acting, videogames, and virtual reality, often require more active quarantining practices to separate ourselves from the identity we imaginatively adopt. The moral upshot of contagion is that we must be mindful of even imaginatively adopting pernicious identities and outlooks.
Bibliography:
Bailey, Sally, and Paige Dickinson. 2016. ‘The Importance of Safely De-Roling’. Methods: A Journal of Acting Pedagogy 2.
Burgoyne, Suzanne, Karen Poulin, and Ashley Rearden. 1999. ‘The Impact of Acting on Student Actors: Boundary Blurring, Growth, and Emotional Distress’. Theatre Topics 9 (2): 157–79. https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.1999.0011.
Geer, Richard Owen. 1993. ‘Dealing with Emotional Hangover: Cool-down and the Performance Cycle in Acting’. Theatre Topics 3 (2): 147–58.
Montola, Markus. 2011. ‘The Painful Art of Extreme Role-Playing’. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 3 (3): 219–37. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.3.3.219_1.
Ortiz De Gortari, Angelica B., and Mark D. Griffiths. 2014. ‘Automatic Mental Processes, Automatic Actions and Behaviours in Game Transfer Phenomena: An Empirical Self-Report Study Using Online
Forum Data’. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 12 (4): 432–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-014-9476-3.
———. 2015. ‘Game Transfer Phenomena and Its Associated Factors: An Exploratory Empirical Online Survey Study’. Computers in Human Behavior 51: 195–202.
Ortiz De Gortari, Angelica B., Karin Aronsson, and Mark Griffiths. 2011. ‘Game Transfer Phenomena in Video Game Playing: A Qualitative Interview Study’. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning 1 (3): 15–33.
Ortiz De Gortari, Angelica B., Halley M. Pontes, and Mark D. Griffiths. 2015. ‘The Game Transfer Phenomena Scale: An Instrument for Investigating the Nonvolitional Effects of Video Game Playing’. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 18 (10): 588–94. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2015.0221.
Rule, Janice. 1973. ‘The Actor’s Identity Crises: Postanalytic Reflections of an Actress’. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy 2 (1): 51–76.
Waggoner, Zach. 2009. My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games. McFarland & Co.
Yee, Nick, and Jeremy Bailenson. 2007. ‘The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior’. Human Communication Research 33 (3): 271–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x.
———. 2009. ‘The Difference Between Being and Seeing: The Relative Contribution of Self-Perception and Priming to Behavioral Changes via Digital Self-Representation’. Media Psychology 12 (2): 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260902849943.
Yee, Nick, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut. 2009. ‘The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior’. Communication Research 36 (2): 285–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650208330254.