Avatar Appearances and Representation of Self: Learning from Second Life¨

Choice of avatars and rendering preferences in a virtual world reveal users’ typology regarding their intention to realize different domains of self concept, thus influencing their self awareness, and social and psychological functions. New tools are required to meet these needs. Introduction Second Life (SL) is a unique virtual world that has characteristics of both social media and a massively multiplayer online game. Users of SL create avatars to represent their virtual identities, which may resemble or differ from their real life identity (Bartle, 2004). Existing research illustrates that avatar appearance (AA) is important in many aspects including confidence, self disclosure, self awareness, and interactional context (Vasalou and Joinson, 2009). However, questions of how different types of virtual identities relate to created AA, and, most importantly, to the structure and attributes of a person’s self in real life, and what implications it has for design and development of new technologies, remain largely unanswered. We investigated these issues by conducting interviews with Second Life users.