Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be touching on a
Speaker 1: topic related to virtual characters. That's right. This was a
Speaker 1: topic that was suggested to us by our listener Peter,
Speaker 1: who is quite involved in virtual reality these days, and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, you guys should do an episode on
Speaker 1: the proteus effect. Now, the proteus effect is something that
Speaker 1: will deal with virtual characters. So we're gonna be touching
Speaker 1: on video games and virtual environments and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But even if you're somebody who has no personal interests
Speaker 1: in video games or anything like that, I hope you
Speaker 1: stick around because it's an interesting topic nonetheless, and I
Speaker 1: think it will ultimately have some relevance to yourself in
Speaker 1: the society you live in, even if you're not somebody
Speaker 1: who's ever played games or plans on playing games, because
Speaker 1: a lot of it does just hinge upon the idea
Speaker 1: of what happens when we put on this other face,
Speaker 1: and it could be you can you can take it
Speaker 1: to the virtual reality extremes to where there is a
Speaker 1: body that I am occupying and I'm walking around in
Speaker 1: it within a virtual environment. There's the video game level
Speaker 1: of a character that I have. I have picked out
Speaker 1: its face, I have picked out it's it's clothing options,
Speaker 1: and now I am interacting with a digital world through it.
Speaker 1: But you can also take it down to the avatar
Speaker 1: level on various message boards or email threads, etcetera. Yeah, totally. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with how some of these video
Speaker 1: games work, where you create an avatar for yourself, this
Speaker 1: this is a thing that happens in a lot of games.
Speaker 1: There's a character creation process. Not all games. Some games
Speaker 1: the character I mean some games you don't actually even
Speaker 1: play as a character. You don't embody a person shaped thing.
Speaker 1: They're like puzzle games and stuff. But in games where
Speaker 1: you play as a character of some hype, some of
Speaker 1: them it's just a fictional, pre established character. But sometimes
Speaker 1: you get to create that character yourself, right, and there's
Speaker 1: usually the beginning of the game some type of process
Speaker 1: you go through to do that, and you get to
Speaker 1: like pick what they look like, and maybe pick what
Speaker 1: some of their personality attributes are or what some of
Speaker 1: their skills are a lot of games have a thing
Speaker 1: like this. Robert, do you have a favorite favorite character
Speaker 1: creation Yeah, well, I'd say more the more recent games.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed the like the sky Rim and Fallout
Speaker 1: character creation suites. I feel like you have a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of options there and you can kind
Speaker 1: of create exactly the character you want. Uh. Thinking back
Speaker 1: to the older games, I was a big fan of
Speaker 1: ice wind Dale and ice wind Dale too. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what that is. These were turn based dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, uh, role playing games that you would play
Speaker 1: online like top down View and that they so it
Speaker 1: was virtual. It was not like a pin and paper,
Speaker 1: not pin and paper. These were video games. They were
Speaker 1: the same engine as Balter's Gay and Torment was another
Speaker 1: one though Torment had pre created characters but was still
Speaker 1: a fabulous game. But the creation suite, especially on on
Speaker 1: ice wind Dale too, as I remember, they had some
Speaker 1: really cool character art you could you could select for
Speaker 1: the thumbnail. I believe that through some minor tinkering you
Speaker 1: could bring in outside art to serve as the thumbnail
Speaker 1: and then you had a fair that these were not
Speaker 1: the most detailed of characters on the screen, but you
Speaker 1: had a fair amount of choice and how they were
Speaker 1: put together as well. Yeah, So one of the things
Speaker 1: we're going to be exploring today is what are the
Speaker 1: effects of coming to embody a character in a virtual environment?
Speaker 1: Does that change the player when you play as a
Speaker 1: character with certain physical or behavioral attributes? Now, Robert, my
Speaker 1: the main character creation process in video games I remember
Speaker 1: from when I was younger is not as interesting as yours.
Speaker 1: It was the wrestler creation mode in the Nintendo sixty
Speaker 1: four game WWF war Zone, which I played when I
Speaker 1: was in like six seventh grade, I think this game, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it was this terrible, blocky looking wrestling game,
Speaker 1: uh that had the WWF wrestlers in it, but you
Speaker 1: could create a custom wrestler. And so what my friends
Speaker 1: and I would always do is try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to create the most ridiculous looking wrestler you possibly
Speaker 1: could that had like I don't know, like you know,
Speaker 1: legs that were five times wider than his head and
Speaker 1: wearing some crazy Easter egg costume. And it was it
Speaker 1: was mainly for laughs, but we did put a lot
Speaker 1: of time and energy into it. It was like we
Speaker 1: had to achieve peak ridiculousness. Well, the ultimate tragedy is
Speaker 1: that you were just a few years away from w
Speaker 1: w F WrestleMania two thousand and No Mercy, which were
Speaker 1: both in sixty four wrestling games built on the the
Speaker 1: a Ki Virtual Pro Wrestling engine from Japan. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is. They were fabulous games, just a
Speaker 1: fabulous engine for the game. But you know, they these
Speaker 1: wrestling games have come a long ways. I was never
Speaker 1: into creating myself in them because it just felt weird
Speaker 1: to me, but I knew people that would do it,
Speaker 1: And nowadays you can. You can like bring in scans
Speaker 1: of your own face or the scans of virtually any
Speaker 1: existing wrestler or celebrity and create an amazingly life like
Speaker 1: just an immaculate representation of that individual in these updated
Speaker 1: wrestling games. So you scan yourself in and you make
Speaker 1: a virtual copy of yourself and then watch it get
Speaker 1: beat down by stone Cold exactly. However, Yeah, go through
Speaker 1: a table or bleed through its face, and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: the technology is amazing, and yet at the same point,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's even stranger to me to try
Speaker 1: and imagine myself doing that, like creating a like a
Speaker 1: muscled avatar of myself that just goes in there and
Speaker 1: just gets beat to a luddy pulp. Now, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you could look at that and say, Okay, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's just people horsing around having fun play in some games,
Speaker 1: which is generally true, and if you take that attitude,
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna, you know, think that there's anything
Speaker 1: super meaningful going on here. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's really worth wondering how doing something like that could
Speaker 1: affect you and possibly change you. This is not a
Speaker 1: scenario that we are biologically adapted for in any way.
Speaker 1: I would say that there's no analogy in nature to
Speaker 1: creating a virtual environment in which you take on the
Speaker 1: characteristics of a created character and play within that virtual environment.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could say that they're like
Speaker 1: rituals maybe where people sort of embody mythological characters that
Speaker 1: they play within the rituals, Right, But even then you're
Speaker 1: still bound to your body when you're doing that enactment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the only other example I can think of
Speaker 1: is just uh, the mental mental time travel, chromasthesia and
Speaker 1: imagining various scenarios occurring and extrapolating how you might react
Speaker 1: in those situations. But then you're still pretty much bound
Speaker 1: to yourself unless there's a particular example from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from from from cultural history where someone is embodying in
Speaker 1: this process, they are embodying the aspect of a god,
Speaker 1: but I am not aware of it. If there is, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say the imagination that's pretty much the only
Speaker 1: equivalent space. But the imagination is not physically enacted. When
Speaker 1: you do virtual environments, you have to physically perform movements
Speaker 1: within those virtual environments. You have to like, you know,
Speaker 1: you move a controller or something like that. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a challenging process that you have to engage with,
Speaker 1: and that is more continuous than imagination, which tends to
Speaker 1: kind of come in and out. Right. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: just merely imagining something or reading a book is probably
Speaker 1: not gonna update your body schema, which into the way
Speaker 1: that you're thinking about your own body. Right, So you
Speaker 1: have to wonder does the idea of playing as a
Speaker 1: character different than yourself change yourself? Does going into a
Speaker 1: virtual environment and embodying some other type of being make
Speaker 1: you a different kind of being in reality? And that's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna be looking at today, So let's take
Speaker 1: a moment to talk about just the name of of
Speaker 1: the effect here, the Proteus effect. So who was Proteus, Well,
Speaker 1: it would see he was a character in the matrix,
Speaker 1: right was he was there? A Proteus matrix. So it's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've entered the matrix. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the funny thing is, it would seem that
Speaker 1: that fate would have us return once more to the
Speaker 1: world of undersea gods and humanoids, because because what we
Speaker 1: have here is Proteus from Greek mythology, the old Man
Speaker 1: of the Sea, the Old Man of the Sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially a primordial sea god. As with all things mythological,
Speaker 1: Proteus is exact identity, and his role shifts over time.
Speaker 1: But that's quite fitting for Proteus in a number of ways.
Speaker 1: In Giants, Monsters and Dragons by Carol Rose, an encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of fantastic Entities and Creatures that I come back to
Speaker 1: again and again, she describes him as quote a primordial
Speaker 1: sea giant and quote a type of gigantic merman and
Speaker 1: guardian of the sea creatures. And he served Poseidon, the
Speaker 1: sea god. He boasted the gift of prophecy as well,
Speaker 1: but you had to catch him to get him to
Speaker 1: share his prophecies. Wait, how do you catch him? Is
Speaker 1: that like rod and lure kind of catching Or essentially
Speaker 1: it's like you gotta chase him down and fight him,
Speaker 1: wrestle him, overcome him that way. But the problem is
Speaker 1: that Proteus can change his shape. He can change it
Speaker 1: into something more monstrous to escape you, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: swifter to escape do you escape you with etcetera. Uh.
Speaker 1: The secret, though, ends up being revealed by his daughter Elda,
Speaker 1: the uh who who lets a few select mortals know
Speaker 1: that you have to catch him while he's sleeping on
Speaker 1: the island of Pharaohs. Now. Various other accounts describe him
Speaker 1: as not only a shape changer, but a being that
Speaker 1: is just constantly changing shape, as being essentially formless, which
Speaker 1: is fitting because this is a is a god of
Speaker 1: the sea. This makes him like the sea itself. He
Speaker 1: is liquid, He is ever changing, difficult to predict, kind
Speaker 1: of like those identity masks in a scanner. Darkly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like never really taking a solid form,
Speaker 1: so you can't really identify somebody later. Yeah, or and
Speaker 1: and would make him difficult to catch as well. And
Speaker 1: this is where we get the word protean, which means
Speaker 1: tending or able to change frequently or easily. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's used just to just in the place of versatile.
Speaker 1: But I think that's sort of usage is kind of
Speaker 1: an insult to the gods, because you might say that, say,
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar is versatile and that he can front a
Speaker 1: band and run a tequila brand. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a bit much to say that that Sammy Hagar, it's protean.
Speaker 1: Though that's impressive. I can do neither of those things. No,
Speaker 1: I I see what you're saying. Like a protean suggests
Speaker 1: some more fundamental changes and and commitments to different natures, right,
Speaker 1: whereas versatile just says that you can, you can multitask,
Speaker 1: you can do some different stuff. Yeah, protean almost has it.
Speaker 1: I mean it has a sort of mad or holy
Speaker 1: vibe to it, right, Like something that is protean is
Speaker 1: um is difficult for us to master and grasp, And
Speaker 1: maybe the same is true of Sammy Hagar. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Certainly it's hard to get him to commit to a
Speaker 1: speed limit. We know that much. Robert where at all
Speaker 1: the Sammy Hagar come from. I don't know. You just
Speaker 1: listen to the Classic rock radio the other day and
Speaker 1: I was just trying to think about who's who is
Speaker 1: an individual that's considered versatile in their interests, and I
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar, Well, I know I have. I initially thought
Speaker 1: of of Maynard from Tool, but then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe Maynard is protean. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: he's a he's a he's he's a mysterious dude that's
Speaker 1: called Sammy Hagar instead. So it's a clear cut you're
Speaker 1: saying Maynard from Tool he does he does his alternative
Speaker 1: hard rock thing, and he does his I've got a
Speaker 1: vineyard I make wine thing yeah and m m a
Speaker 1: oh yeah he's into fighting. Yeah yeah, he has has
Speaker 1: multiple dimensions to his character. The idea it all comes
Speaker 1: back to wrestling in the end. Yeah, maybe not all
Speaker 1: that protean, but that's certainly versatile. But today we're not
Speaker 1: talking about Sammy Hagar. We're not talking about Maynard, We're
Speaker 1: not even really talking about Greek shape shifters. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the Internet, video games, virtual reality, and the idea
Speaker 1: that we get to pick and choose our form, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, maybe we have to choose our identity.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we will take a quick break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we will get into the original research
Speaker 1: on the proteus effect. Thank alright, we're back, all right now.
Speaker 1: The short definition of the proteus effect is that it
Speaker 1: is a name for the way that avatars, meaning virtual
Speaker 1: characters that we embody. It's a name for the way
Speaker 1: that avatars change our behavior in a virtual environment. So
Speaker 1: there was some original research on this subject between the
Speaker 1: years like two thousand seven and two thousand nine or so.
Speaker 1: That's when this first came out, and it was associated
Speaker 1: with the work of a researcher by the name of
Speaker 1: Nicki Ye and Nikki he was. He was the scientist
Speaker 1: behind the original proteus effect, and he summarized his original
Speaker 1: research in an article I read from two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine where he pointed out some of the main features
Speaker 1: that they had discovered in their first couple of studies
Speaker 1: on it. So he points out, to start with, this
Speaker 1: was sort of like the starting basis of the idea
Speaker 1: that putting on certain garments, clothing and uniforms has been
Speaker 1: shown to change people's behavior. For example, there are these
Speaker 1: experiments that show that when you dress subjects in black uniforms,
Speaker 1: they behave more aggressively than when you dress them in
Speaker 1: white uniforms. And experiments like these show that to some extent,
Speaker 1: our behavior is influenced by visual self perception. We act
Speaker 1: out the parts people would expect us to act out
Speaker 1: based on how we look. And I think this is
Speaker 1: probably the same kind of research that informs, or at
Speaker 1: least partially informs the old business idea that you should
Speaker 1: dress for the job you want, not the job you
Speaker 1: have rights right now, I think the part of that
Speaker 1: advice is based on the reasoning the dressing that way
Speaker 1: will influence the people who have the power to hire
Speaker 1: or promote you. Right that you want to look the part,
Speaker 1: and so you're trying to influence others. But there's another
Speaker 1: side of that that dressing for the job you want
Speaker 1: is also an influence on the self. It can also
Speaker 1: be a beneficial alteration of self perception. If you dress
Speaker 1: like someone with a certain job, you'll probably find yourself
Speaker 1: behaving and performing more like someone who belongs in that job.
Speaker 1: You put the costume on, and the costume helps you
Speaker 1: get into character. But what this research shows with the
Speaker 1: way in clothes cognition changes us is that the costume
Speaker 1: tends to get you into character, whether you mean to
Speaker 1: get into character or not. Now we've touched on in
Speaker 1: clothes cognition on the show in the past, cognitive psychologist
Speaker 1: Joe Adam and Adam Galinsky from Northwestern University coined the term.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous examples is the use of,
Speaker 1: say a lab coat. What happens when you wear a
Speaker 1: lab coat and maybe carry a clipboard around. Well, they
Speaker 1: found that the effect would work. You would feel like
Speaker 1: smarter or more, you know, in control of your doctor's
Speaker 1: status here, But only if you wore the coat and
Speaker 1: we're aware of the symbolic meaning. So you actually you
Speaker 1: have to know what it's about, what it represents, and
Speaker 1: you actually have to essentially make it a part of
Speaker 1: your body by covering yourself in it. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say that essentially the way this works is that you're
Speaker 1: performing according to stereotypes, but you have to be aware
Speaker 1: of the stereo peotypes to perform according to them, right, right,
Speaker 1: And then, according to Golinski as well, we don't just
Speaker 1: think with our brains, but with our bodies and our
Speaker 1: thought processes are based on physical quote physical experiences that
Speaker 1: set off associated abstract concepts. Yeah, I think. I mean
Speaker 1: this might sound kind of silly, but I think about
Speaker 1: the way that wearing a suit jacket changes the way
Speaker 1: I behave I think sometimes it does, and I very
Speaker 1: much associated literally with the way my shoulders and my
Speaker 1: arms feel. Well I put on a suit jacket, I
Speaker 1: feel the tension in the way the jacket constrains the
Speaker 1: movements of my shoulders or not not necessarily constrains them,
Speaker 1: but you know, you feel you can feel the jacket
Speaker 1: that's shaped like that, the suit jacket, and it actually
Speaker 1: does influence I think, probably the way I talk, probably
Speaker 1: to some extent, the way I react to people, whether
Speaker 1: I'm more likely to shake somebody's hand. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there's no way to fully test this in a controlled way,
Speaker 1: but I strongly suspect that it changes my behavior, and
Speaker 1: it changes my behavior through a constant, attenuated awareness of
Speaker 1: what my body feels like in that piece of clothing.
Speaker 1: So you're not you're not only dressing like business Joe,
Speaker 1: you become business Joe. You know, Business Joe's different than
Speaker 1: a lot of other business shows because the suit jackets
Speaker 1: I wear are are not like cool business jackets. They're
Speaker 1: more like old seventies jackets I got from my dad. Now,
Speaker 1: I think we do need to be careful with this
Speaker 1: kind of research because I think it's very easy to
Speaker 1: interpret it in an overly determinative way. For example, I
Speaker 1: was I was wondering, Okay, are there studies that have
Speaker 1: found the opposite, that have found that this whole you know,
Speaker 1: like wearing a black uniform doesn't actually change the way
Speaker 1: you behave compared to wearing some other colored uniform. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are studies going the opposite way, not necessarily
Speaker 1: that undercut the original findings, but at least that showed
Speaker 1: that the effect is obviously not the same in all contexts.
Speaker 1: For example, the search has been applied to uniform colors
Speaker 1: in professional sports, and I found a two thousand ten
Speaker 1: study that found no correlation at all between uniform color
Speaker 1: and aggression in professional hockey. This is the basic argument
Speaker 1: was that like if you wore red, right, if you
Speaker 1: wear like a red uniform or a black uniform or something,
Speaker 1: that you're going to be more aggressive than if you
Speaker 1: wear like a blue uniform or green uniform. And this
Speaker 1: study found no correlation of that kind, said it didn't
Speaker 1: matter what color uniforms the hockey players were wearing. But
Speaker 1: like I said, it doesn't mean the original research is wrong,
Speaker 1: just that it probably applies differently in different contexts and
Speaker 1: depends on a lot of different variables. So, but back
Speaker 1: to what was Ye's research to establish the idea of
Speaker 1: the proteus effect. So, in a serious experiment, starting with
Speaker 1: one published in two thousand seven, Ye and colleagues tried
Speaker 1: to study whether the same perception embodiment, whether the same
Speaker 1: like embodiment of what others see you looking like that
Speaker 1: takes place with clothes and costumes also takes place with
Speaker 1: virtual costumes, meaning virtual characters. Does the virtual avatar that
Speaker 1: you choose to represent you in a video game or
Speaker 1: a virtual world change who you are and how you
Speaker 1: behave Now this question instantly makes me think back to
Speaker 1: screens that I've seen a second life. I have not,
Speaker 1: I've never really used second life myself, but they never
Speaker 1: really Does that mean you have a little bit? Well,
Speaker 1: what I did is that I attended a church service
Speaker 1: where the the individual giving the sermon also did the
Speaker 1: sermon in second life, and there were individuals gathered from,
Speaker 1: you know, across the country, and I guess beyond in
Speaker 1: a virtual if that's the right word for a second
Speaker 1: life environment, a virtual chapel uh to share in the sermon.
Speaker 1: And they were attending in various forms. So some people
Speaker 1: were women, some people were male, some people were like
Speaker 1: animals or animal human hybrids. So that is I instantly
Speaker 1: thought to that and thought, well, you know, I wonder
Speaker 1: what was going on in each of their minds, Like
Speaker 1: what did their chosen forms say about their ideal identity,
Speaker 1: their experienced identity, etcetera. I've never considered this question before,
Speaker 1: but what generally would the theologians of the various religions
Speaker 1: say about whether the rituals and sacraments of their religion
Speaker 1: are effective if performed virtually. So like, if you, for example,
Speaker 1: receive holy communion in a Christian church, or do a
Speaker 1: ritual in any religion, but do it not physically with
Speaker 1: your body, but virtually in a virtual environment, does the
Speaker 1: sacrament work? Does it confer the same benefit? Huh? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. I don't recall. I don't think
Speaker 1: this particular service involved communion, but maybe it did, and
Speaker 1: I just forgot about it. I imagine that, though, of course,
Speaker 1: would hinge upon your faith, you know, particular beliefs about communion.
Speaker 1: Uh for instance, so whether the bread actually becomes the
Speaker 1: body of Christ in your body, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But then again, if if you believe that, then why
Speaker 1: can't the the digital communion wafer do the same thing? Somehow?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, it takes me back to the
Speaker 1: techno religion question we are. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: ever got into this question in our techno religion episodes,
Speaker 1: but we did talk about the idea of whether a
Speaker 1: virtual similar simulated prayer wheel is just as effective as
Speaker 1: a physical prayer wheel. That's right, Uh yeah, because of course,
Speaker 1: the the the traditional prayer wheels are essentially a machine
Speaker 1: praised in what tradition? Is it Buddhist or Buddhist? Yes?
Speaker 1: Uh so, it's it's a wheel that contains h the
Speaker 1: prayer as it's usually like written down on sheet of
Speaker 1: paper and or not a sheet of paper, but it's
Speaker 1: a long string of paper coiled up in there, and
Speaker 1: by by turning it, you are turning the prayer. Uh.
Speaker 1: But how is that really that different from a digital
Speaker 1: machine doing the same thing. It's just a it's an
Speaker 1: advancement in the technology, but but it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it's an advancement in the basic idea. Well, I find
Speaker 1: that a very interesting question, and maybe we can come
Speaker 1: back to it in the future. But we are getting
Speaker 1: off subject. Okay, So we're looking at the first study
Speaker 1: by Ye and colleagues, and this was in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven and human Communication research, And what the researchers did
Speaker 1: in the study is compare subjects with a virtual avatar
Speaker 1: designed to be either attractive or unattractive. So they had
Speaker 1: these virtual avatars that were rated as attractive avatars or
Speaker 1: not very attractive ones, and then they had the subjects
Speaker 1: who embodied those avatars, who were paired with them interact
Speaker 1: with a virtual stranger controlled by a lab assistant, and
Speaker 1: subjects with attractive virtual representation. So if you got a
Speaker 1: very good looking avatar, they behaved differently than those with
Speaker 1: unattractive ones. The virtually attractive players got closer to their
Speaker 1: conversation partners, and they shared more personal information with these
Speaker 1: virtual rangers than people who had been given unattractive avatars
Speaker 1: to perform with. So that's kind of interesting because the
Speaker 1: attractiveness of your avatar doesn't change anything about you. Right,
Speaker 1: It doesn't change whether you are naturally a confident or
Speaker 1: attractive person, does it. Well, that's kind of the question here, right,
Speaker 1: It does taking on this virtual skin change your performance?
Speaker 1: Are you like fully sleaving yourself into this identity? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't change what you physically look like.
Speaker 1: It might have a time, but it doesn't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: immediately change what you physically look like, but it might
Speaker 1: actually change the way your brain works. In another study,
Speaker 1: you found a similar thing. Uh. The researchers found that
Speaker 1: the height of a virtual character avatar influenced behavior in
Speaker 1: a virtual bargaining task. So they had people go into
Speaker 1: a virtual world. You go into like this video game environment,
Speaker 1: and you have to bargain with somebody, and people with
Speaker 1: taller avatars relative to their virtual conversation partner negotiated more
Speaker 1: aggressively than people who are given shorter avatars. So it's
Speaker 1: not that you're a taller person in real life, but
Speaker 1: if you're just given a taller character to play as
Speaker 1: in the virtual world, you act with more like aggressive
Speaker 1: bargaining tactics and confidence. Interesting, it becomes a situation where, again,
Speaker 1: humans have not evolved for this, we've evolved to deal
Speaker 1: with things in the real and when we deal when
Speaker 1: we deal with things in the virtual world, we are
Speaker 1: still behaving as if we are beholding a physical presence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's not so surprising, right, because what this
Speaker 1: is is that the avatar is changing our behavior within
Speaker 1: the virtual world itself. You're given a character to perform
Speaker 1: as inside a virtual world. It changes how you behave
Speaker 1: in the virtual world. The big question would be does
Speaker 1: this change carry over into the rest of your life, Like,
Speaker 1: once you leave the garment of a digital avatar behind,
Speaker 1: are there lingering effects? So if you play a giant
Speaker 1: for an hour in a virtual environment, or certainly you
Speaker 1: embody a giant for that amount of time, do you
Speaker 1: then leave your virtual session behaving as a giant. Yes.
Speaker 1: And in a two thousand nine study, Y and colleagues
Speaker 1: investigated this. So they attempted to replicate the attractiveness study
Speaker 1: from the previous paper, right, So you'd get assigned an
Speaker 1: avatar that was either attractive or not attractive. And then
Speaker 1: they added a second stage to the experiment. They had
Speaker 1: an additional task outside the original virtual environment, So subjects
Speaker 1: were given an avatar attractive or unattractive. Then they had
Speaker 1: to do the interaction task from the first study. Then
Speaker 1: after that they left the virtual environment and they were
Speaker 1: asked to participate in what they were told was a
Speaker 1: different study. It's like, do you want to do another study? Now?
Speaker 1: This one was about online dating, and the participants were
Speaker 1: asked to create a profile on a college dating site
Speaker 1: that had been set up. It was like a mock site,
Speaker 1: not a real one. And they were giving photos of
Speaker 1: nine people of the gender they were interested in dating,
Speaker 1: and then asked to pick two of the nine that
Speaker 1: they would most like to get to know better and
Speaker 1: get in contact with. And the study found that people
Speaker 1: who had been given attractive avatars chose more attractive partners
Speaker 1: on the dating site, and people who had been given
Speaker 1: less attractive avatars chose less attractive partners to contact on
Speaker 1: the dating site. And this would all seem to indicate
Speaker 1: that the attractiveness of the virtual character, the avatar they'd
Speaker 1: been given, was still shaping self perception and confidence and
Speaker 1: behavior even after the players logged out and moved on
Speaker 1: to other things. So we we are seeing the lingering
Speaker 1: effects then of the virtual body. We are this is
Speaker 1: the proteus effect in action. Well, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder. So when I was in seventh grade or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I was creating ridiculous looking wrestlers with like huge
Speaker 1: legs and stuff to get beat down by stone cold
Speaker 1: Steve Austin and my friends and I laughed and thought
Speaker 1: it was funny. Did this follow me? How was different
Speaker 1: after I stopped playing the game? Or was? I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it had no effect, But did this change who
Speaker 1: I was when I was a little mill schooler. Huh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I'm having to go back
Speaker 1: and think on my past a video game experience as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, because when one issue that comes up specifically
Speaker 1: deals with the use of sexy characters, especially that's sort
Speaker 1: of sexy female characters that you often encounter in fantasy
Speaker 1: and sci fi properties. You know, maybe it's the their
Speaker 1: scantily dressed or we've all seen examples of this where
Speaker 1: the uh, the male figure has more traditional armor and
Speaker 1: the female figure has armor that makes no sense of
Speaker 1: within the confines of an actual combat scenario. It's just
Speaker 1: all about revealing the feminine form. Yeah, totally. I remember
Speaker 1: before I was even aware, really, when I was much younger,
Speaker 1: when I was not really aware yet of feminist critiques
Speaker 1: of video games or anything like that. I do remember
Speaker 1: seeing some of the character designs for female characters and
Speaker 1: thinking my younger self, like that just doesn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I don't think she would be very
Speaker 1: warm in that. Yeah, but yeah, obviously this is a
Speaker 1: big question in video game design and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The the objectification, especially of female bodies in these games
Speaker 1: is a big cultural point to talk about. But the
Speaker 1: idea of the proteus effect takes it a little bit
Speaker 1: farther right. So it's not just an idea of how
Speaker 1: women's bodies are represented in the games and to what
Speaker 1: extent the way they're represented is empowering or disempowering, But
Speaker 1: it also has to do with how it affects us
Speaker 1: to play as these types of characters exactly. So I
Speaker 1: ran across a paper that deals with this two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve paper titled the Embodiment of Sexualized Virtual Selves, the
Speaker 1: Proteus Effect and Experiences of Self Objectification via Avatars. This
Speaker 1: is by Jesse Fox, Jeremy In Baylinson, and lose to Case.
Speaker 1: So in this study, they took the proteus effect and
Speaker 1: they studied it in the light of of two other
Speaker 1: key factors. First of all, objectification theory. So this is
Speaker 1: the idea that society treats women as depersonalized objects rather
Speaker 1: than individuals mere sexual bodies, and that women come to
Speaker 1: internalize this and learn to see and value themselves based
Speaker 1: on their physical appearance. And this is known as self objectification.
Speaker 1: And then the other is rape myth acceptance. So, simply put,
Speaker 1: the acceptance of various myths concerning rape, most famously, that
Speaker 1: dressing a certain way, going certain places, are behaving in
Speaker 1: certain ways means that the woman is quote unquote asking
Speaker 1: for it. It's like shifting the blame onto the victim
Speaker 1: of the rape. Yeah, yeah, it's it's victim blaming, pure
Speaker 1: and simple. It's it's repellent, and it's also truly damaging because,
Speaker 1: as the authors point out, past studies have found that
Speaker 1: women who accept these myths don't take proper precautions against grape,
Speaker 1: and men who accept these myths are more likely to
Speaker 1: commit rape. Okay, So the researchers here, they went into
Speaker 1: their study with two predictions. First, they figured that the
Speaker 1: use of sexualized avatars would result in more body related thoughts.
Speaker 1: And then second, participants who wear a sexualized avatar will
Speaker 1: express more rape myth acceptance or or r m A. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is if you are given an
Speaker 1: avatar in a virtual environment that that has all these
Speaker 1: overtly sexualized features, that's designed in a sexually objectified way,
Speaker 1: it's going to increase your self objectification and it's going
Speaker 1: to increase the likelihood that you will accept these harmful
Speaker 1: myths about rape. Right, It's basically one way of looking
Speaker 1: at it is Okay, so you have an image of
Speaker 1: a scantily clad eleven warrior, Okay, that depiction of even
Speaker 1: a non human technically female form that is the at
Speaker 1: least partially the result of all of this, these these
Speaker 1: cultural energies, the cultural practices and beliefs that are taking
Speaker 1: place and uh and sort of pressurizing this into form.
Speaker 1: And then if you embody that form, then you are
Speaker 1: subject to those uh, those pressures as well. If that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, totally. A lot of the way the
Speaker 1: proteus effect seems to work is by importing of stereotyped behavior.
Speaker 1: So you there are stereotypes about how a person who
Speaker 1: looks like X is supposed to behave When you're given
Speaker 1: a character that looks like that looks like X to embody,
Speaker 1: you begin behaving with those stereotypes in mind, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and so and even subconsciously. It's not necessarily you know,
Speaker 1: an avert practice practices going on here. So, this particular
Speaker 1: study involved eighty six female participants from a West Coast university,
Speaker 1: ages eighteen through forty one, and uh, it was a
Speaker 1: reasonably racially diverse group as well. Why twenty four point
Speaker 1: four percent Asian or Asian Americans, seven percent Black, too
Speaker 1: point three percent Latino, two point three percent multi racial,
Speaker 1: and five point eight percent other. And they were placed
Speaker 1: in a fully immersive VR RIG. Participants had their photographs
Speaker 1: taken with a digital camera for a presumably unrelated study
Speaker 1: so that these could be worn as faces, essentially so
Speaker 1: they could give their virtual avatar their own face and uh,
Speaker 1: and they also allowed for others to uh to wear
Speaker 1: an appropriately aged female face that was not their own.
Speaker 1: So here's how the study went down. They were randomly
Speaker 1: assigned to one of four conditions. Either a sexualized version
Speaker 1: of themselves so it's it's their face but the sexualized
Speaker 1: avatar body, a sexualized other where they're just in a
Speaker 1: sexualized body but it's just somebody else's face on their
Speaker 1: random character non sexualized self. So it's you and you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you know, you're just dressed in normal virtual
Speaker 1: clothing and then non sexualized other where you're a non
Speaker 1: sexualized per some of the different face. And then they
Speaker 1: had them interact with a male Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: they had to look in a mirror to sort of
Speaker 1: behold themselves, and then they interacted with a male character.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that indeed, participants in sexualized conditions reported
Speaker 1: significantly more body related thoughts. UH, So the face itself
Speaker 1: had no effect there as for rape myth acceptance of
Speaker 1: judged by the use of Bird's r m A scale
Speaker 1: from UH which uses a series of questions, this is
Speaker 1: what they They found out. Participants who wore the sexualized
Speaker 1: self expressed greater r M A than participants with a
Speaker 1: sexualized other, and there was no significant difference between the
Speaker 1: two non sexualized m v our bodies. Well that's a
Speaker 1: disturbing finding. Now, the authors and all this, they acknowledged
Speaker 1: that this was a small study limited in scope. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just less than a hundred women from a single college.
Speaker 1: But they concluded from this that women can be affected
Speaker 1: negatively by the avatars they wear and it can alter
Speaker 1: their behavior both on and offline. I think that would
Speaker 1: be an important thing to keep looking into and see
Speaker 1: if you can replicate, because I mean, there are tons
Speaker 1: of video games that, as you said, have these overtly
Speaker 1: sexualized female bodies that characters or that players in body,
Speaker 1: and if it leads to something as truly harmful as
Speaker 1: acceptance of dangerous rape myths and victim blaming, this is
Speaker 1: something that could have a very strong effect on society
Speaker 1: and would be important to know. Yeah, and likewise I
Speaker 1: would I would love to see more on the potential
Speaker 1: effects on male players as well, because the argument here
Speaker 1: is not that that females are wired in a weird
Speaker 1: way and therefore are susceptible to this influence, susceptible to
Speaker 1: like the sexual proteus effect. Obviously men would be susceptible
Speaker 1: to this too, even though the stereotypes that are involved
Speaker 1: in this particular study are very female centric. But maby
Speaker 1: comes back to the wrestling games for instance. You know,
Speaker 1: like what happens if a male player is then putting
Speaker 1: their face on this body with this like ridiculous muscle
Speaker 1: man Zeke and then engaging in physical violence uh with
Speaker 1: a with another character, Like what what kind of protein
Speaker 1: effect would that have on the individual? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: one thing that's not clear yet is how potentially strong
Speaker 1: this effect is. Um. Now, there are obviously going to
Speaker 1: be variables no matter what, even if we don't know
Speaker 1: what they are yet, They're gonna be variables that make
Speaker 1: this effect stronger or less strong to the extent that
Speaker 1: it's true at all. But I wonder how potentially strong
Speaker 1: is it? You know what I mean? Like at its
Speaker 1: most strong, will it have a little bit of an
Speaker 1: effect that we walk away with when we're done playing
Speaker 1: the game? Or are there ways that you could tweak
Speaker 1: and fine tune the gaming and avatar embodiment experience that
Speaker 1: could have radical or revolutionary self editing types of effects?
Speaker 1: You know? Like I'm almost wondering if there could be
Speaker 1: like avatar therapy, Like you have a person who has
Speaker 1: harmful or self destructive types of self perception issues, and
Speaker 1: that with a finely tweaked virtual environment and finally tweaked
Speaker 1: type of avatar, you could actually treat that sort of condition. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it just wouldn't be the first time people
Speaker 1: have proposed treating or studied the treatment of various ailments
Speaker 1: through virtual reality. Different studies into the use of virtuality
Speaker 1: to treat nicotine addiction, for example, or a post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress disorders. So, uh, I mean that's one of the
Speaker 1: things about virtual reality is that there's there, there are
Speaker 1: a number of possibilities there beyond mirror entertainment or distraction.
Speaker 1: And uh and we should probably cover more of them
Speaker 1: on the show. I feel like we've we haven't really
Speaker 1: touched on VR and in quite a while. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I've read along these lines is that I
Speaker 1: came across the study from fourteen applying the idea of
Speaker 1: the proteus effect to the idea of exercise games. So
Speaker 1: this was a study published by Benjamin Lee at All
Speaker 1: in Games for Health Research, Development and Clinical Applications. So
Speaker 1: this was a study about exercise as games and how
Speaker 1: they can be used to try to encourage fitness behaviors
Speaker 1: and children. And study was called we Myself and Size
Speaker 1: the influence of proteus effect and stereotype threat on overweight
Speaker 1: children's exercise motivation and behavior and excer games. So this
Speaker 1: is going to be one example of the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I was just talking about, right, like taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the proteus effect to try to optimize people's performance
Speaker 1: and self improvement behaviors. And the idea here is that
Speaker 1: if you can get children to exercise more based on
Speaker 1: exercise video games by using different types of avatars. So
Speaker 1: they tested a hundred and forty children between nine and
Speaker 1: twelve years of age who were overweight. The dependent variables
Speaker 1: they tested were exercise attitudes of the children, exercise motivation
Speaker 1: that was platform specific, specifically like how motivated are you
Speaker 1: to exercise on this we game you've got, and then
Speaker 1: finally their their performance inside the exercise game, And what
Speaker 1: they ultimately claimed to find is that overweight children who
Speaker 1: were given avatars that looked overweight performed worse compared to
Speaker 1: children who were given avatars of a normal body size.
Speaker 1: So if you're given an avatar that looks fitter, that
Speaker 1: looks healthier, you do better in all four of the
Speaker 1: dependent variable categories. And they also tested stuff about stereotype
Speaker 1: threat like whether giving these children negative stereotypes about exercise
Speaker 1: motivation and overweight children would hurt their performance, and that
Speaker 1: also did seem to matter. So it turns out that
Speaker 1: you don't want to give children negative stereotypes about how
Speaker 1: they might perform in these video games if you want
Speaker 1: them to do better. But also just changing what the
Speaker 1: avatar they use looks like can really matter in how
Speaker 1: they do with exercise motivation and exercise performance in the games. Well,
Speaker 1: I've never played a fitness video game per se, but
Speaker 1: I can I can second see where that would that
Speaker 1: would happen effect. Yet again, I want to ask the
Speaker 1: question I asked a minute ago. I wonder, to whatever
Speaker 1: extent this effect is real, how strong could it possibly be?
Speaker 1: Like is the most you could hope for that you'll
Speaker 1: get a slight improvement with this kind of thing? Or
Speaker 1: could you tweak and keep testing these types of avatar
Speaker 1: changes until you find just the right formula to really
Speaker 1: make a huge difference in the way people's brains work
Speaker 1: in these tasks. Yea. Indeed. Indeed, another interesting way that
Speaker 1: I found this being studied was the idea of performing
Speaker 1: stereotyped gendered behaviors in video games based on the gender
Speaker 1: of the avatar you're you've you've been given, so they're
Speaker 1: stereotypes about how certain genders should behave in video games.
Speaker 1: One would be that there's a stereotype that females would
Speaker 1: like in a in a battle game where you're like
Speaker 1: dealing damaged to enemies and then performing healing spells or
Speaker 1: something like that, where you're healing yourself and healing others.
Speaker 1: This would be a massive multiplayer online deal where you're
Speaker 1: you're playing with other human players yea in the virtual realm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So imagine a game like World of war Craft or something.
Speaker 1: You can you can like hack at the monster, you
Speaker 1: can heal yourself, and the stereotype would say that, well,
Speaker 1: male players are gonna hack more and heal less, and
Speaker 1: that female players are gonna heal more and hack less
Speaker 1: to whatever. That that might not be true about real
Speaker 1: performance with gender identity at all, but that's like the
Speaker 1: stereotyped idea. And it turns out that players that that
Speaker 1: difference doesn't appear so much in the actual gender identities
Speaker 1: of players, but it does appear more so with the
Speaker 1: virtual identities of characters. So whether or not the player
Speaker 1: is actually actually identifies as male or female, the character
Speaker 1: that they're playing as in the game will conform to
Speaker 1: those stereotyped behaviors. More like people playing as virtual female
Speaker 1: characters heal more interesting. Huh. You know, I can't help
Speaker 1: but think again about about sky Rim as an example
Speaker 1: of a possible example, or at least in an area
Speaker 1: for steady and all of this where you have uh,
Speaker 1: these various uh official expansions that came out that allowed
Speaker 1: your character to not only marry, but to adopt children
Speaker 1: and essentially grow a family in this game that's mostly
Speaker 1: about killing monsters and exploring, uh, you know, to what
Speaker 1: extent does uh does the proteus effect rear? It's it's
Speaker 1: ugly head here as well. But indeed, could a game
Speaker 1: like Skyrim make you a better parent? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good question. I come back to
Speaker 1: something that this is obviously not very original idea. People
Speaker 1: have been asking this ever since the days of Doom
Speaker 1: and stuff in the nineties. But I wonder about the
Speaker 1: proteus effect like effects of first person shooters. I admit
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of many first person shooters.
Speaker 1: The few that I like, you know, I like like
Speaker 1: the Bioshot games because they've got interesting environments and storylines
Speaker 1: and stuff. But generally I don't really like games where
Speaker 1: you just become a gun and you're just walking around
Speaker 1: in all you are is a gun poking into the world,
Speaker 1: and then that gun shoots. Well there's something kind of
Speaker 1: holy in American about that. But uh, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't think of many games like that that I find
Speaker 1: very enjoyable. I don't even bother with them generally now,
Speaker 1: but there's something about the embodiment as a gun that
Speaker 1: has kind of creepy proteus effect implications. Oh well, I
Speaker 1: mean we could, we could go to an entire tangent there,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, a gun is a tool that
Speaker 1: you hold in the reel, and when you hold a
Speaker 1: gun or any tool in the real your body schema
Speaker 1: adjust to its presence and that tool or weapon, that gun,
Speaker 1: that sword, it becomes an extension of your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in these games, it's all you see of your body.
Speaker 1: It's the only part of you there is. We need
Speaker 1: to play some of the updated ones because like the
Speaker 1: latest Doom, your arms are in there because you're you're
Speaker 1: ripping open the heads of demons, stopping their faces and
Speaker 1: all sorts of of gory effects. Now, at the same
Speaker 1: time that I think all this is interesting to wonder about,
Speaker 1: I don't want to over speculator oversell confidence on video
Speaker 1: game panic because I haven't seen any convincing evidence that
Speaker 1: like playing a first person shooter or makes you a
Speaker 1: killer or anything like that. But but it does make
Speaker 1: you think. All right, well that note, We're gonna take
Speaker 1: one more break, and when we come back, we have
Speaker 1: a few a few additional ideas I want to share
Speaker 1: in some closing thoughts. Alright, we're back. So we were
Speaker 1: talking about violent video games and games where you become
Speaker 1: a gun or a murderous space marine, or or you know,
Speaker 1: any number of of variations on this theme. And uh,
Speaker 1: I actually ran across a piece in Ian magazine, which
Speaker 1: we we frequently cite. They have a wonderful uh storehouse
Speaker 1: of of essays about a variety of topics, always thought provoking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was this one by Angela Buckingham makes the
Speaker 1: case that murder should be illegal in virtual reality as
Speaker 1: well as you know, our actual reality, and she uses
Speaker 1: the produce effect to make her case. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to read one quick quote from it. She says,
Speaker 1: in an immersive virtual environment, what will it be like
Speaker 1: to kill? Surely a terrifying, electrifying, even thrilling experience. But
Speaker 1: by embodying killers, we risk making violence more tantalizing, training
Speaker 1: ourselves in cruelty, and normalizing aggression. The possibility of building
Speaker 1: fantasy worlds excites me as a filmmaker, but as a
Speaker 1: human being, I think we must be wary. Now. I
Speaker 1: can hear all of the video game players out there
Speaker 1: in the audience saying like, no, don't limit my freedom.
Speaker 1: You know, well you'll you'll say like, hold on, I've
Speaker 1: played lots of violent video games that are highly realistic,
Speaker 1: and you do all kinds of fighting and destruction and killing.
Speaker 1: But I'm a perfectly peaceful person. I would never want
Speaker 1: to hurt anybody. Uh, you know, you want to use
Speaker 1: your yourself as the anecdotal example against what she's arguing.
Speaker 1: But while I'm not saying I agree with her, I
Speaker 1: think we should take this idea seriously. Yeah, it's something
Speaker 1: to think about that, the idea that as games become
Speaker 1: more realistic, as the way we embody the characters we
Speaker 1: play in them becomes more immersive and more compelling, the
Speaker 1: proteus effects that they produce could become stronger and stronger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in this uh, this essay, Buckingham references the work
Speaker 1: of German philosopher Thomas Metzinger, and uh, and I looked
Speaker 1: up an interview with him from two thousands sixteen and
Speaker 1: New Scientists. So I'm gonna read this, but I want
Speaker 1: to drive home before I even read it. That Metzinger
Speaker 1: is not a Luddite. He's not opposed to VR. He's
Speaker 1: expressed excitement for the possibilities of VR. But he is
Speaker 1: just saying, let us, let us be cautious, let us
Speaker 1: study what is happening as we procede. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: there may be a risk of depersonalization, whereafter an extended
Speaker 1: immersion in a virtual environment, your physical body may seem
Speaker 1: unreal to you. Fully immersive experiences have a bigger and
Speaker 1: more lasting impact on people's behavior. In psychology, we know
Speaker 1: from a rubber hand illusion that our brains can be
Speaker 1: fooled into thinking that an inanimate rubber hand is our own.
Speaker 1: In v our environments, we can be fooled into thinking
Speaker 1: that we are our avatars. Consumers must understand that not
Speaker 1: all of the risks are known in advance. There may
Speaker 1: be a tiny percentage of the population that has a
Speaker 1: certain psychiatric vulnerability, such that binging on VR may result
Speaker 1: in a prolonged psychotic episode. One can only speculate. Yet again,
Speaker 1: I think that is an idea worth taking very seriously.
Speaker 1: Now you can cite the examples, uh, the anecdotes of
Speaker 1: you know, I and my friends. We we play these
Speaker 1: video games. We play violent games, so we would never
Speaker 1: heard a fly. We're you know, we're very nice people,
Speaker 1: but you are. They're taking a small sample. When you
Speaker 1: apply these stimuli to vast populations, it's possible that some
Speaker 1: subset of the population could have very strong responses to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly we see this with responses to other
Speaker 1: forms of media. Yeah, I mean we know that some
Speaker 1: people were more vulnerable to queuing than others, and are
Speaker 1: more susceptible to influences from from fiction, from movies, from music, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting that he invokes the idea
Speaker 1: of the rubber hand illusion. If you've never seen this research,
Speaker 1: you should look up some of these videos on YouTube
Speaker 1: or even try it yourself where you can. You can
Speaker 1: put two hands on a table and one of them
Speaker 1: is your real hand, in the other hand is a
Speaker 1: fake hand that's not actually yours, and somebody like maybe
Speaker 1: like strokes both hands or something long enough to give
Speaker 1: you to get you to start imagining that the fake
Speaker 1: hand is also your real hand. Then if you hit
Speaker 1: that fake hand with a hammer, people will freak out.
Speaker 1: They for a second they think it's their actual hand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is another case where I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from listeners who have more experience with with VR video games,
Speaker 1: for instance, than we do. UH. For instance, I know
Speaker 1: we're both fans of the The Alien Isolation game that
Speaker 1: came out a few years back. It's my understanding that
Speaker 1: one can play that in a virtual environment, which sounds
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying because when I played that game, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was I was actually hiding in uh in
Speaker 1: a locker, waiting for the xenomorph to pass. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine playing it in a more personal virtual environment. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting game because, as we talk about proteus effects
Speaker 1: in the way they change our brains, lots of first
Speaker 1: person games, as we were talking about earlier, are very
Speaker 1: The character has a lot of agency and commits a
Speaker 1: lot of violence. Maybe and it's very uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: powerful and dominant. When you're you're in doom or something
Speaker 1: and you become a gun and you're just killing all
Speaker 1: these monsters in this Alien game and some other recent
Speaker 1: generation of horror games. You're very powerless. You have nothing
Speaker 1: you can really do to beat the monster. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's about hiding, and it's about cleverness and
Speaker 1: powerlessness and how to to sneak away and survive. And
Speaker 1: it's a very different type of experience than a lot
Speaker 1: of other games of this generation. Yeah, and it really
Speaker 1: more more fitting with the human condition. Right. We don't
Speaker 1: succeed in life by being just unstoppable killing machines. We
Speaker 1: we do it by by hiding in lockers and under
Speaker 1: tables and waiting till the danger passes and holding your breath.
Speaker 1: That's right, you gotta hold your breath. It's always important. Now.
Speaker 1: I guess one thing we could say here is that
Speaker 1: we've sort of strayed a little bit from the core
Speaker 1: of the Proteus effects, because we've gone on to just
Speaker 1: talk about how the whole game mechanics, you know, everything
Speaker 1: about a video game can change the way we think
Speaker 1: the things you have to do in it, the you know,
Speaker 1: the type of visual experience it is. But to bring
Speaker 1: it back to the idea of the avatar itself, not
Speaker 1: what the game is, but the the appearance and the
Speaker 1: and the attributes of the character you play as, and
Speaker 1: how that can shape your mind. I am brought to
Speaker 1: a question that goes outside of virtual environments, or maybe
Speaker 1: goes actually to get back to the very place we started,
Speaker 1: the analogy between virtual environments and the only thing like
Speaker 1: them in in prehistory being being the imagination. Robert, I'm
Speaker 1: curious if in your Dungeons and Dragons experiences you've ever
Speaker 1: seen anything like the proteus effect, Like do the characters
Speaker 1: people create for a D and D session change the
Speaker 1: way the players themselves behave once even once they leave
Speaker 1: the game, even when not explicitly role playing, Like does
Speaker 1: a person playing a lawful good paladin take a break
Speaker 1: to order pizza differently from that same player if they're
Speaker 1: currently running some chaotic evil beasts that eats people. That's
Speaker 1: a great question, um, I have to say I will.
Speaker 1: First of all, there are different types of players, and
Speaker 1: some get into the role playing aspect of it more
Speaker 1: than others. The people I play with, none of them,
Speaker 1: none of them are using a chaotic evil character, or
Speaker 1: like every everybody's character seems to be a partial extension
Speaker 1: of their own personality, but maybe they're leaning into certain
Speaker 1: things more than others. Like one player, it was more
Speaker 1: was very argumentative as his character, but he's also a
Speaker 1: little bit argumentative in life, right, but maybe he was
Speaker 1: a little more argumentative when when he was playing his character.
Speaker 1: Another plays a character that is a that is kind
Speaker 1: of gregarious, and I could see sometimes I see him
Speaker 1: behaving in a gregarious way that seems like an extension
Speaker 1: of his character. But it's kind of a chicken and
Speaker 1: egg scenario. They're right, you know, are they They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily acting out in a way that is different from themselves.
Speaker 1: They're just sort of leaning into this, uh, this this
Speaker 1: version of who they already are. Well, another way to
Speaker 1: think about that is that they could actually be using
Speaker 1: some version of the proteus effect. A little bit different
Speaker 1: because it's not in virtual environments, but let's let's go
Speaker 1: back to a virtual environment. I think people could use
Speaker 1: some version of the proteus effect to essentially intentionally edit
Speaker 1: to their own personality. You know, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to change who you are, but I would say that
Speaker 1: the most sure fire way to make changes to yourself
Speaker 1: is not through thinking about them, but through doing things
Speaker 1: right if you want to change who you are, change
Speaker 1: your behavior first, and your nature will follow. And and
Speaker 1: to that point, I have to say that the people
Speaker 1: that I've played with, they tend to they tend to
Speaker 1: want to be noble. They want to they want to
Speaker 1: be the heroes of the story and and save the day,
Speaker 1: which is great because that's the kind of game I
Speaker 1: want to play. Uh And in d M, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to d M a game where everyone is
Speaker 1: a is a marauding jerk quad, right and they're just
Speaker 1: tearing apart towns, because then that does begin to feel
Speaker 1: a little icky, I would think. But but then again,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from anyone out there who's
Speaker 1: been in a game like that. Have you have you
Speaker 1: been in a chaotic evil essentially? Like like maybe there's
Speaker 1: a there's a Blood Meridian role playing montule out there
Speaker 1: that people are really crazy about and you can tell
Speaker 1: me about it that I for one would not want
Speaker 1: to run or participate in in the Blood Cormick McCarthy
Speaker 1: Blood Meridian Dungeons and Dragons kind of campaign. And then
Speaker 1: everybody just fights over whether they get to be Judge Holden. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I would hope Judge Holden is an MPC.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, but that's an idea, Like you just
Speaker 1: have a party of Judge Holden's rolling around horrible, Why
Speaker 1: would that be even fun? Don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: But okay, So I was talking about the idea of
Speaker 1: editing the self. Now you can imagine to whatever extent
Speaker 1: the proteus effect is real, and that you could exploit
Speaker 1: it to intentionally edit your own personality in a direction
Speaker 1: of your choosing. Right, So you could say, like, what
Speaker 1: if I want to be a character more like X,
Speaker 1: you could intentionally seek out virtual environments where you have
Speaker 1: to play as a character who has those attributes you're seeking. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you'd be virtually faking it till you make it. You'd
Speaker 1: be enacting the behavior to shape yourself in the real
Speaker 1: world as a byproduct. Interesting. Yeah, again we get back
Speaker 1: to the idea of VR therapy. But you know, to
Speaker 1: allude to another episode we've done before, do you think
Speaker 1: there might be a proteus effect in place with the
Speaker 1: game of Werewolf for Mafia? Oh, I wonder is it
Speaker 1: does that? Displaying that game again, we're getting a little
Speaker 1: bit off of the core of the proteus effect. Having
Speaker 1: to do with avatars and getting more into like game
Speaker 1: mechanics and behavior. But yeah, that does it train you
Speaker 1: to be a liar? Like if you play a werewolf
Speaker 1: a lot, does it make you a less honest person? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or just a paranoid and judgmental person. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to offer one more weird take. See what you
Speaker 1: think about this. Maybe this is a terrible take all right,
Speaker 1: though I also think I can't be the first person
Speaker 1: to suggest this, so I'm sure other people have written
Speaker 1: about this. Social media, we've been talking about m m
Speaker 1: O RPGs, massive multiple multiplayer online RPGs. I would say
Speaker 1: so shoal media today is an m m O RPG.
Speaker 1: Not It's not just like one. It literally is one.
Speaker 1: It is a massive multiplayer online role playing game. If
Speaker 1: you just take Twitter for example, It's a massive online
Speaker 1: environment in which you create a character, and that character
Speaker 1: is based on you, but isn't actually you. It is
Speaker 1: a representation of you, composed of little segments of information
Speaker 1: and behavior that you choose to add to that profile
Speaker 1: of that version of you. It's character you create, interacting
Speaker 1: with millions more who are doing the same thing, playing
Speaker 1: roles of a character. They've created. And some players are
Speaker 1: casual and they don't play very much, and they don't
Speaker 1: play the role very consistently. They just pop in and out.
Speaker 1: Others are power players and kind of addicts of the game.
Speaker 1: They play it all the time. Sometimes these players form
Speaker 1: loose teams and go out and fight oppositely aligned enemy
Speaker 1: players in the very ruel space. I think Twitter really
Speaker 1: does work in a lot of ways, kind of like
Speaker 1: one of these games like World of Warcraft or something,
Speaker 1: except the character creation is just less constrained by the
Speaker 1: fantasy environment of the game. Now that's a good point.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I feel like we could, really
Speaker 1: we could go wild with that concept, discussing how social
Speaker 1: media changes who we are. Yeah, but I mean, I
Speaker 1: think on this model you have to wonder about the
Speaker 1: feedback loop of how the character you create on social
Speaker 1: media feeds back into who you actually are, and how
Speaker 1: that changes the way you play your character online. It
Speaker 1: creates some kind of self sustaining feedback loop. But in
Speaker 1: what what drives that loop and in what direction does
Speaker 1: it go. Here's one more scary thought. So in all
Speaker 1: of this, we invoke the mythic proteus and seemingly you know,
Speaker 1: it's just meant to refer to the idea of changeing forms.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's actually more to it than that.
Speaker 1: But if we're to have fun with the concept, let's
Speaker 1: not forget that. Proteus also had that gift of unerring.
Speaker 1: No uh so, not normally would he prophesies the future.
Speaker 1: But his his visions were absolutely they were, they were unquestionable,
Speaker 1: so he forced to. He can tell you who you are,
Speaker 1: who you will be, what you will do. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if the danger, or perhaps the promise in some
Speaker 1: cases here of the produce effect isn't that it will
Speaker 1: make you someone that you are not, but it will
Speaker 1: let you become who you really are. Well, it makes
Speaker 1: me ask the question, who are we? But what we are?
Speaker 1: What more could we do? Being what we are? You are,
Speaker 1: what you do, even if it's online, Just do it all? Right.
Speaker 1: On On that note, we want to remind you check
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Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison.
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