That Avatar Is Looking at Me!

Social Inhibition in
Virtual Worlds

Austen L. Hayes, Amy C. Ulinski, and Larry F. Hodges

School of Computing
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634
ahayes@clemson.edu, amyulinski@gmail.com, lfh@clemson.edu

Abstract. What effect does controlling an avatar, while in the presence of other
virtual agents, have on task performance in virtual worlds? Would the type of
view have an influence on this effect? We conducted a study to observe the ef-
fects of social inhibition/facilitation traditionally seen in human-to-human in-
teraction. The theory of social inhibition/facilitation states that the presence of
others causes people to perform worse on complex tasks and better on simple
tasks. Simple tasks are well-learned, easy tasks, while complex tasks require
more thought processes to complete the task. Participants interacted in a virtual
world through control of an avatar. Using this avatar, they completed both sim-
ple and complex math tasks in both 1st person and 3rd person views, either in
the presence of another female virtual agent, male agent, or alone. The results
from this study show that gender of virtual agents has an effect on real humans’
sense of presence in the virtual world. Trends exist for inhibition and facilita-
tion based on the gender of the agent and the view type. We have also identified
several challenges in conducting experimental studies in virtual worlds. Our re-
sults may have implications on designing for education and training purposes in
virtual worlds.

Keywords: Avatars, virtual agents, embodied agents, virtual worlds, Second

Life, social facilitation, and social inhibition.

1 Introduction and Motivation

Virtual agents, avatars, and virtual worlds are new ways to interact with both computers
and other people [11, 13, 14]. A virtual agent is a graphically represented computer-
controlled character. An avatar refers to the graphical embodiment of a user [12]. Vir-
tual worlds are three-dimensional spaces where thousands of people can interact using
avatars. Second Life (SL) is a highly popular virtual world that has seen rapid growth in
the past few years [12]. While virtual worlds like SL have similarities to online 3D
games, they differ in that users are not bound by a set of goals [16]. The lack of struc-
tured goals, the ability to construct almost any kind of environment desired, and the
highly social nature of SL are major reasons for its popularity. SL is currently favored
by researchers for the ease of access and its open, dynamic nature [26]. Many research-
ers and institutions are using SL and other virtual worlds as a natural way to extend

J. Allbeck et al. (Eds.): IVA 2010, LNAI 6356, pp. 454–467, 2010.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 455

online learning, due in large part to students’ interest and ability today in gaming and
other online technology [26]. Recently there has been rapid growth in the use of virtual
agents, avatars, and development in virtual worlds for education, business, and enter-
tainment [17, 13]. The more avatars are used, the more important it becomes to deter-
mine how these highly social forms of interaction affect users.
With all the interest and development in virtual worlds through universities and
other institutions, it is still not completely clear in what cases virtual worlds provide
benefits over traditional or established communications [9]. Indeed, formal research
into the impacts of using virtual worlds such as SL is limited [4]. To best make use of
these worlds, we need to understand how interaction with virtual agents and avatars in
these virtual worlds affects those using avatars. By investigating the effect of avatar
use on social influence we hope to identify implications for effective virtual world
applications. One way to identify the effects of social influence is to investigate how
social facilitation/inhibition theory plays a role in virtual world interaction.
Social facilitation/inhibition is a classical test in social psychology literature to in-
vestigate how the presence of others affects task performance [7, 18, 22]. Social
facilitation refers to the performance enhancement displayed when a person performs
a simple or well-learned task in the presence of others. Social inhibition refers to the
performance impairment seen when a person performs a complex or novel task in the
presence of others. Previous work has shown inhibition effects on real humans caused
by projected virtual humans and immersive virtual humans [25]. The limitations of
this study were such that the majority of participants were females and only a female
observer was used in both the virtual human and real human conditions. Additionally,
this study did not evaluate users controlling avatars at a desktop display with a key-
board, which is more than immersive or projected displays.
Our current study seeks to evaluate the effect seen in previous research on male
participants using a standard desktop display and keyboard for interaction and exam-
ine the effects of both a female and male observer. In addition, previous research has
shown that viewing a virtual world in 1st-person view increases the sense of being in
the room [10]. We seek to observe this increase in presence, and determine if there is
a larger effect on task performance in 1st-person as a result. The main goal of this
study is to examine if the presence of an avatar or virtual agent has an effect on task
performance, while interacting through the use of an avatar. The secondary goal is to
determine if view type has an effect on presence, which may have an effect on task
performance. Investigating how avatar use affects performance may result in a better
understanding of the impacts of virtual worlds and lead to improved virtual world
design and applications.

2 Related Work
2.1 Social Facilitation/Inhibition

Triplett’s research into social influence led to many other studies into social theories
[19], including Zajonc’s drive theory, Cottrell, Wack, Sekerak, and Rittle’s socializa-
tion theory, Sanders, Baron and Moore’s attentional conflict theory, and Guerin and
Innes’ social monitoring theory [22, 5, 18, 7]. There have been numerous studies
456 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

investigating how the presence of others affects task performance. Bond and Titus
looked at 241 social facilitation studies and summarized the results of the studies in a
meta-analysis [3]. Some researchers suggest inhibition is caused by the evaluation
apprehension that is experienced in front of an audience [5]. Zajonc, however, sug-
gests the mere presence of others can cause the physiological arousal needed for inhi-
bition to occur [22].
Blascovich et al. studied social facilitation in goal-relevant situations involving af-
fective and cognitive processes, based on the biopsychosocial model of challenge and
threat [2]. Challenge occurs when the resources from individual experiences meet the
demands of the situation, while threat occurs when the resources are insufficient.
Participants who performed a novel task in the presence of others had both increased
cardiac response and increased vascular resistance. Participants performing the well-
learned or novel tasks alone showed no significant reactivity from the baseline. These
findings are consistent with the challenge-threat model.
Hoyt et al. studied virtual worlds as a platform for social psychology research [8].
Participants performed two tasks: mastered and not mastered. Participants performed
these two tasks either in presence of a virtual audience, or alone. Those who received
the virtual audience condition were led to believe the audience was either automated
agents or human-controlled avatars. The results of the study found that those per-
forming in the presence of avatars displayed social inhibition performance effects, as
compared to either the alone or automated agent condition. The study, however,
introduced a possible confound in that the researchers controlling the avatar condition
were physically present in the room with the participants. Also, the data did not
strongly indicate the effect of audience.

2.2 Virtual Humans

Zanbaka et al. conducted a study into how visual realism and gender affected how
persuasive a speaker was [24]. Either a virtual human, virtual character, male or fe-
male person presented a persuasive passage to participants. The results showed that
virtual characters were as persuasive as real people. Additionally, female participants
were more persuaded by male speakers, and male participants were more persuaded
by female speakers [24]. Pertaub et al. investigated to what extent a virtual audience
could cause social anxiety, in particular the fear of public speaking [17]. The study
showed that the virtual audience indeed caused social anxiety, and the level of anxiety
was directly related to type of feedback the audience provided. Garau et al. conducted
a study to determine how people react to different kinds of behavior and levels of
responsiveness exhibited by virtual agents in virtual worlds [6]. Each participant
received one of three virtual agent conditions: static, moving, or both moving and
responsive to participant movements. Participants were aware that the virtual agents
were computer-generated, but participants with higher levels of social anxiety were
more likely to avoid “disturbing” the agents. Also, participants who received the
responsive condition experienced a higher sense of personal contact with the agents.
The researcher’s findings seem to show the participant responses are influenced by
both the expectations of the technology and the agents’ behavior [6].
Zanbaka et al. also conducted a study investigating the effect of virtual human
presence on task performance. Participants learned a task and performed either the
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 457

learned task or a novel task, while being in the presence of a virtual human, a real
human, or alone. While the data did not indicate a strong effect, it did show that par-
ticipants reacted similarly to a virtual human as they would a real person. The weak
results of the study were largely attributed to the use of pattern recognition and num-
ber categorization tasks [25]. In a follow-on experiment, participants performed both
simple and complex math tasks in the presence of a virtual human, of a real human, or
alone [23]. The virtual human was present either in a virtual environment viewed
through a head-mounted display, or through a life-size projection of the virtual human
on the wall near the participant. Results showed participants were inhibited while
performing the complex tasks in the presence of a virtual human.

2.3 Avatars and Virtual Worlds

Yee et al. investigated the effects of avatar height and perceived avatar attractiveness
in a virtual world [21]. The researchers found that that attractiveness affected confi-
dence of user, and height affected how the users negotiated. In another study, it was
found that users who had the taller avatars negotiated more aggressively in face-to-
face interactions than those who received the shorter avatars [21]. Okita et al. found
that the mere belief that one is interacting with a human-controlled avatar, as opposed
to a virtual agent, results in participants focusing more on the task given to them [15].
Participants in the experiment interacted with a virtual agent they believed to be either
an avatar or an agent. Both post-test data and skin conductance measures showed the
avatar condition resulted in higher arousal. This higher arousal was correlated to
better learning [15]. Lims and Reeves research suggests not only that self-
representation via avatars increases arousal and interaction from users, but also
physiological arousal is increased during identical interactions when told a character
was an avatar as opposed to an agent [11].

3 Experimental Study
Our focus was to determine if controlling an avatar had any measurable effect on task
performance when in the presence of another virtual agent. We also were interested
in how the view (either 1st person or 3rd person) might affect task performance. The
theory of social facilitation states that people perform better on simple tasks in the
presence of others, while social inhibition states that people perform worse on com-
plex tasks in the presence of others. Our hypothesis was that previous results of the
inhibition effects of virtual humans on task performance would carry over into virtual
worlds where the real humans use avatars as a medium for interaction. In addition,
we hypothesized that the type of view used would influence these effects.

3.1 Study Design

We used a 3x2x2 mixed experimental design of the following independent variables:

1. Audience type (Alone, Female Observer, Male Observer)
2. Task type (Simple, Complex)
3. Participant view (1st person, 3rd person)
458 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

The first condition was manipulated between subjects and participants were randomly
assigned to one of three variables for audience type. The last two were manipulated
within subjects where variables were counterbalanced Latin Square to account for
residual effects. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four orders:
1. V1,S V1,C V2,C V2,S
2. V1,C V2,S V1,S V2,C
3. V2,S V2,C V1,C V1,S
4. V2,C V1,S V2,S V1,C
V1 refers to 1st person view, V2 refers to 3rd person view, S refers simple math task
type and C refers to complex math task type. The dependant variables were partici-
pants’ accuracy performance on the tasks and response times on the tasks.

3.2 Experimental Tasks and Measures

Pre-experimental questionnaires collected demographic data (gender, age, ethnicity,

computer use levels), and math anxiety data. The math questionnaire we used asked
participants to rate how anxious different math-related statements made them [1].
The 25 items presented were assesed on a 5-point Likert scale (1–Not at all, 2–A
little, 3–A fair amount, 4–Much, 5–Very Much). Mean responses were computed and
helped determine any preexisting confounding factors among participant groups.
Both simple and complex experimental tasks required participants to verify
whether or not a particular math equation, presented in sentence form, was accurate.
Math tasks were chosen because it eliminated the need for additional training, as we
could assume all college students have basic math skills. The simple task contained
only one operation of addition or subtraction displayed as a yes or no question, for
example: “Is 4 + 2 = 6?” The complex question contained four operations of a com-
bination of multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. For example: “Is (3 x 4)
+ (2 x 1) – 7 = 9?” For the incorrect equations, the answer was within two values of
correct answer. Participants used key presses to respond to questions. The number of
the questions answered correctly and the amount of time to response to each question
were recorded and used to measure task performance.
Post-experimental questionnaries collected data on co-presence and presence.
Copresence refers to the extent participants who received the observer condition felt
they were in the room with another person and was measured using the 17-item Slater
Co-Presence Questionnaire [14]. Participants used a 7-point numerical scale (1-Not
at all to 7-A great deal) to answer question such as “The experience seems to me more
like interacting with the other person…” or “I had a sense of being with the other
person....”. Item responses were used to compute the copresence mean. Presence
refers to the extent participants felt that they were in the virtual room and was
measured using the 9-item Steed-Usoh-Slater (SUS) Presence Questionnaire [20].
Item responses were used to compute the presence mean. We also collected other
information, such as how the participant felt about the tasks, the agent present in the
room, and the environment, through an open-ended debriefing interview.
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 459

3.3 Experimental Setup

3.3.1 Physical Testing Room and Apparatus

All participants completed experimental tasks, pre- and post-experimental question-
naires in a designated physical testing room without a real human present in the room.
Stimulus presentation and data collection were controlled by an Intel Core 2 2.66GHz
Dell Pc with an ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card attached to a 20-inch flat screen
monitor. The observer avatar and the guide avatar were run in the virtual world on a
PC of the same specifications. A Rosewill RH-40C stereo headset with microphone
allowed the participant to hear the observer and instructions.

3.3.2 Virtual World

SL viewer version 1.23.5 rendered the virtual world to the user. A male guide avatar
trained the participant in the virtual world how to move around, sit in a chair, stand
up, answer questions, advance to the next question, and what to do if any problems
occurred. The participant communicated with the guide avatar using voice chat
through the headset and microphone worn during the task completion. This experi-
ment requires that the virtual observers, both male and female, exhibit human-like
behaviors and gestures. To make the virtual observer human-like, we modeled both
the male and female virtual observers actions based on the non-verbal behaviors noted
from observing a human observer, including coughing, scratching the head, looking
around, tilting the head, and looking at the participant, all triggered at random. The
guide could trigger a pre-recorded phrase to be heard by the participant if they talked
to the observer during the task. Participants were not told if the observer was an
avatar or agent.

Fig. 1. a) 1st person view of a complex math task with male observer condition. b) 3rd person
female participant view of a simple math task in male observer condition.

3.4 Procedure

After entering the main lab, participants gave consent and then the greeter took them
to the physical testing room where they filled out pre-experimental questionnaires.
Each participant was assigned an avatar, of their same gender, to use for interaction.
The greeter instructed the participants how to communicate with the avatar guide,
displayed on the screen. The greeter introduced them and left the physical testing
room. Through voice chat, the guide avatar provided instructions on their virtual task.
460 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

The guide first gave instructions on how to walk in the virtual room and sit in the
virtual chair. After the participant mastered avatar movement, the guide told the par-
ticipant the objective of the tasks and how to respond to the tasks using the keyboard.
The guide then led participants through a practice task to familiarize them with the
procedure and the visual and audio feedback they would receive. Participants were
shown how to open and walk through a virtual green door, which led into the actual
task room. For the observer condition, the guide introduced the participant to the
observer agent, while triggering the agent to greet the participant. The participant
remained in the virtual task room for task completion, while the guide returned to the
virtual training room.
Participants completed a total of four math task sections, with each section contain-
ing 25 math sentences of correct and incorrect problems randomly arranged. At the
end of each math section, the participant was instructed via the task display to stand
their avatar up and walk around the virtual room and sit back down in the chair when
ready. Upon completion of this task the view either switched or stayed the same,
depending on what view the order specified.
After completion of the tasks, the participant received instructions on the task dis-
play to stand up their avatar, walk back into the training room, and speak with the
guide avatar. The guide avatar instructed the participant to walk out of the physical
testing room and return to the lab. Participants completed a post-questionnaire, were
debriefed and thanked for participating. Participation lasted no more than one hour.

4 Experimental Control in Online Virtual Worlds

SL is a virtual world designed to be highly interactive. Avatars are meant to move
freely in open spaces and interact with nearly all objects and avatars. While this level
of interaction is both the design and appeal of SL, creating an experiment in a virtual
world posed several interesting challenges.

4.1 Limiting the Virtual World and Avatar Interference

We observed in pilot studies that participants tended to interact with elements of the
virtual world before receiving instructions. This tendency to interact at-will meant
participants could perform actions at any time before understanding the task. One
design issue we considered was the door in the training room that led into the actual
task room. To ensure participants received all necessary training, the door was pro-
grammatically locked to prevent the participant from opening the door before being
instructed to. After training, the guide unlocked the door using key presses. Once
unlocked, participants were able to open the door at-will during the tasks.
SL presents users with a large amount of stimulus. For our study, any stimulus
other than math tasks and the observer avatar could present a confound. To help
minimize visual distractions, the virtual task rooms only contained objects necessary
to complete the tasks. Also, the virtual building containing both the training and
actual task rooms had no doors to the outside. This enclosure ensured that the other
parts of our virtual world would not distract participants from their tasks. Limiting
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 461

participant movement to only the building did not present a confound as they were
unaware that a larger environment existed outside the building.
Traditionally, avatars can come and go from public islands at will. We therefore
had to ensure no outside avatars interfered with the study and no accidental input
from other avatars was collected. The experiment was housed on the Clemson School
of Computing’s virtual research island, which was restricted to only avatars of author-
ized faculty and students. Additionally, all data collection scripts were configured to
only accept responses from the participant avatar.

4.2 Camera Movement

SL’s built-in camera positioning allowed the participants’ view to swing outside the
walls of the building, allowing a view of the rest of the virtual world. To ensure par-
ticipants were not distracted by the virtual world outside of the building, we con-
structed a black shell surrounding the building. This shell ensured that if the view
moved outside the walls of the building, participants would see only the color black.

4.3 Sit Detection

If a person walks away from a physical task, they cannot perform that task. However,
in a virtual world, where key presses are used to collect responses, a participant could
respond to a question without focusing on it. To overcome this issue, we program-
matically determined in real-time if the participant was currently sitting in the chair.
Only when the participant was sitting in the chair, which ensured the task and the
observer were properly view, would key presses be logged. Knowing when the par-
ticipant was sitting was also critical for what view the participant received. When the
script detected the avatar sitting in the task chair, the view would change to either a
preset 3rd person or 1st person view including the task and the observer, if present.
Camera angles in SL for experimental purposes need to be programmed to ensure that
a specific view is seen consistently.

5 Results

Mean accuracy performance percentages and mean reaction times were computed by
summing each item across each of the 25 trials in each block of the math tasks. A re-
peated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to test for the between
subjects effect of audience type (alone, female observer, and male observer) and within
subjects effects of task type (Simple and Complex) and view type (1st person and 3rd
person), where α=0.05 was used to indicate significance. A total of 35 participants,
males only, from Clemson University participated in this study, mean age =19.77 (SD=
1.78). They were randomly assigned one of the three audience conditions (Alone=11,
Male Observer=14, Female Observer=10). There was no significant difference found
among audience type for computer usage, online worlds usage, 2D game usage, 3D
game usage, exposure to virtual humans, and math anxiety.
462 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

5.1 Accuracy Performance

The results of a repeated measures ANOVA found no significant main effect of mean
accuracy percentage based on Audience type F(2,31) < 1. As expected, there was a
significant interaction effect of mean accuracy percentage based on task type,
F(1,31)= 5.67, p=0.024, n2=0.16, where participants performed significantly better on
the simple task (M=98.2%, SD=0.04) than on the complex task (M=96.9%, SD=
0.03). An interaction effect for task type by audience type was not significant, F(2,
31)=1.05, p=0.364. There was a near significant interaction effect of task type by
view type, F(1,31)=2.30, p=0.14. An interesting observation was that participants
performed better on tasks in 1st person view while alone or with a male observer, but
better in 3rd person view with a female observer. There was no significant interaction
effect of view type, F(2,31) < 1, or view type by audience type, F(2,31)=1.15, p=0.33.

Fig. 2. Mean accuracy among audience type by task type and view type by audience type

Fig. 3. Mean response times among audience type by task type and view type by audience type

5.2 Response Times

The results of a repeated measures ANOVA found no significant main effect of mean
response times based on audience type F(2,31) < 1. As expected, there was a signifi-
cant interaction effect of mean response times based on task type, F(1,32)= 283.63,
p<0.001, n2=0.09, where mean response times were significantly slower during the
complex task (M=9094.26 ms, SD=2.82) than the simple task (M=2163.41 ms,
SD=0.71). Interaction effects for task type by audience type, F(1,32)=2.10, p=0.15,
and for task type by view type, F(1,32)=2.30, p=0.14, were near significance. An
interesting observation, similar to accuracy results by view type, was that participants
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 463

responded faster on tasks in 1st person view while alone or with a male observer, but
faster in 3rd person view with a female observer. There was no significant interaction
effect of view type, F(1,32)=1.19, p=0.28, nor view type by audience type, F(1,32)<1.

Fig. 4. Number of participants responding to the presence of the avatars by audience type

5.3 Presence, Co-presence, and Debriefing Interview

A one-way ANOVA found a significant difference for presence among audience type
F(2,33)= 3.45, p=0.044, where mean presence ratings were significantly higher for the
male observer (M=4.45, SD=1.25) than both the female observer (M=3.24, SD=1.22)
and alone (M=3.35, SD=1.04). No significant differences were found for mean co-
presence ratings among audience type, F(2,34) <1, for alone (M=3.40, SD=0.56),
female observer (M=3.06, SD=1.01), and male observer (M=3.14, SD=0.96). 66% (16
out of 24) of participants in the audience condition, felt like they were in the room
with someone. Of those, 9 participants were observed by a female, and 7 were ob-
served by a male. The difference of proportions was significant, χ2(4, N= 35)=13.25,
p=0.01, with 6% (4 out of 24) of those who did not feel like they were in the room
with someone responded “not at all” and 6% (4 out of 24) responded “with Bob only”
(the guide). 50% (12 out of 24) of participants in the audience condition felt like
someone was watching them, as compared with the alone condition, though the dif-
ferences in proportion were not significant, χ2 (2, N= 35)= 4.39, p=0.11. Of those in
the audience condition, 7 participants were observed by a male and 5 participants
were observed by a female. Responses of participants feeling like someone was
watching them was significantly correlated with the audience type, r=0.330, n=35,
p=0.05, though was not significantly correlated with participants’ accuracy perform-
ance and response times. Participants in the audience condition responded to the ques-
tions ‘did you feel like you were in the room with another person’ or ‘did you feel like
you were being watched’:
• “…when she sneezed or coughed, felt more like a human…”
• “…a little bit, when she was watching me and looking at the screen…”
• “…at times, a cough seemed like he was impatient…”
• “…yeah, in a way when I was walking around. I focused on the math, but
looked at him occasionally…”
An interesting observation was that although both observer avatars were developed to
resemble college students in age. One participant characterized the female character
464 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

as “a presence of a strict teacher” or “like a teacher” while another participant charac-

terizing the male as a peer, “like a peer watching me”. Although conclusions cannot
be made based on comments from only two participants, it might be useful to collect
data on participants’ perceptions of the design of characters. Those in the alone condi-
tion confirmed they felt alone by their responses of “no” when asked whether they
were in the room with another person, and that they commented that they indeed felt
alone in the testing room, such as “felt like I was alone” and “did feel like I was
alone”. Comments on the effect of the view type were that 1st person view felt more
realistic and that they felt more watched in the 1st person view:
•
st
“…a little more in the 1 person view…”

• “…when I was in 1 person view I felt like I was in the room...”

st

Other comments were in relation to comparing the realism of the guide avatar,
Bob, to the realism of the observer avatars, Sally and John:
• “…no lip-syncing and gestures made her [Sally] look fake…”

• “…if Bob was in the room it would have been more real…”

• [felt like someone was in room] “…with Sally no, but with Bob, yes...”

6 Discussion
The lack of significant difference found for any of the pre-experimental measures among
audience type indicates that none of these aspects were contributing factors in perform-
ance differences among participants grouped by audience type. Although results were
weak, trends were found to indicate an inhibition effect, where participants performed
worse and responded slower on the complex task in the presence of both a female and
male observer. Furthermore, participants performed the worst and slowest in the presence
of a male observer. There was also a trend of facilitation that participants performed better
and responded faster on the simple task in the presence of a female observer only. It is
likely that continuing the study with more participants, resulting in higher power, results
on task performance may become significant. Presence was found to be significantly
higher when participants were observed by a male than when observed by a female or
alone. Differences found in presence are typically dependent on display type; however
this result means that participants had a higher sense of being in the virtual room based on
observer gender. This higher sense of presence could have contributed to the stronger
inhibition result found among the male observer condition.
Co-presence ratings were low, less than 4 on a scale from 1 to 7, and did not differ
between the alone condition and the two observer conditions. Additionally, more
participants reported that they felt like the male observer was watching them than the
female observer, yet more participants felt like they were in the room with someone
else with the female observer than with the male observer. Though, it is not clear as to
what differences there were between the male and female observer to produce these
differences. Low co-presence may help to explain the weak results of inhibition and
facilitation. Participants may not have felt like they were with another person possibly
due to the realism of the character, animations and gestures, or other properties of the
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 465

virtual world viewer. The lack of conversation between the character and the partici-
pant could not have been a contributing factor due to the fact we incorporated a simi-
lar amount of conversation as our previous experiment [23]. Although not significant,
the results on view type reveal a trend that when males are performing a task, per-
formance is higher in 1st person view unless a female is present. If a female avatar or
virtual agent is present in the room, males’ performance will be better if the task is
completed in 3rd person view. Since our sample population consisted of only males,
further research is needed to determine the effects of the female population.

7 Conclusions and Future Work

This paper has identified several challenges as a result of conducting an experimental
study in a virtual world, due to the freedom and flexibility in interaction. These results
could have important implications for designing virtual worlds for education and
training. It was important to limit the stimulus of the virtual world so that participants
would perform the experimental task rather than explore other areas of the virtual
world. Secure access was another important issue when evaluating effects based on
the presence of another avatar. Having another avatar present would have affected the
results on the study and can have effects during educational and training tasks. In
addition, we needed to implement features that would make sure that the participant’s
view was focused on the task while they were actually performing the task. These
features were used to avoid any accidental button presses that would interact with the
task as a result of participants’ focus on something else, not realizing their actions on
the task. This would be an important feature to implement if conducting an evaluation
for educational or training purposes to ensure poor results came from individual’s
actual performance and not from interaction with other elements of the virtual world.
This study statistically found that males feel higher sense of presence in the virtual
world while a male virtual agent is in the virtual room, as opposed to a female agent
or alone. This study also revealed several interesting trends. Males tend to be more
inhibited by male agents while performing a complex task and perform better on sim-
ple tasks in the presence of a female agent. Males also tend to perform better on tasks
while using 1st person view, unless a female is present, then 3rd person view will af-
ford better performance. Although these additional trends exist, they were not signifi-
cant. We plan, however, to continue to run more participants through the study to
determine if these trends will become significant effects. As our sample population
consisted of males only, we also plan to recruit female participants to determine the
cross-gender effects of inhibition and facilitation among virtual agents and real hu-
mans. In summary, the results from this study have implications for future designers
of virtual worlds using virtual humans for interaction. The results from this study
show that gender of virtual agents or avatars have an effect on sense of presence in
the virtual world. Additionally this study found trends that virtual agents or avatars
may have an effect on task performance in a virtual world using a desktop display and
keyboard. Furthermore, the combination of using various view types, either 1st person
or 3rd person view, with characters of certain genders in the virtual room can have an
effect on task performance as well. When designing virtual worlds, designers must be
careful that characters in the virtual world do not inhibit rather than facilitate the user.
466 A.L. Hayes, A.C. Ulinski, and L.F. Hodges

Acknowledgments. This research was supported, in part, by NSF Research

Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site Grant CNS-0850695. We would like to
thank Toni Bloodworth, Lauren Cairco, and Jerome McClendon for their assistance in
conducting the study.

References
1. Alexander, L., Martray, C.: The development of an abbreviated version of the mathematics
anxiety rating scale. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development 22(3),
143–150 (1989)
2. Blascovich, J., Mendes, W.B., Hunter, S.B., Salomon, K.: Social “facilitation” as challenge
and threat. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31, 422–429 (1999)
3. Bond, C.F., Titus, L.J.: Social facilitation: A meta-analysis of 241 studies. Psychological
Bulletin 94, 265–292 (1983)
4. Cliburn, D.C., Gross, J.L.: Second Life as a Medium for Lecturing in College Courses. In:
42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2009, pp. 1–8, 5–8
(2009)
5. Cottrell, N.B., Wack, D.L., Sekerak, G.J., Rittle, R.H.: Social facilitation of dominant re-
sponses by the presence of an audience and the mere presence of others. Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology 9, 245–250 (1968)
6. Garau, M., Slater, M., Pertaub, D.P., Razzaque, S.: The responses of people to virtual hu-
mans in an immersive virtual environment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environ-
ments 14, 104–116 (2005)
7. Guerin, B., Innes, J.M.: Social facilitation and social monitoring: A new look at Zajonc’s
mere presence hypothesis. British Journal of Social Psychology 2, 7–18 (1982)
8. Hoyt, C., Blascovich, J., Swinth, K.: Social inhibition in immersive virtual environments.
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 12(2), 183–195 (2003)
9. Jaeger, B.: What educational activities fit virtual worlds: Towards a theoretical evaluation
framework. In: 3rd IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technolo-
gies, DEST 2009, pp. 715–720 (2009)
10. Kallinen, K., Salminen, M., Ravaja, N., Kedzior, R., Sääksjärvi, M.: Presence and emotion
in computer game players during 1st person vs. In: Proceedings of the PRESENCE 2007,
3rd person playing view: Evidence from self-report, eye-tracking, and facial muscle activ-
ity data, pp. 187–190 (2007)
11. Lim, S., Reeves, B.: Computer agents versus avatars: Responses to interactive game char-
acters controlled by a computer or other player. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud. 68(1-2), 57–68
(2010)
12. Messinger, P.R., Stroulia, E., Lyons, K., Bone, M., Niu, R.H., Smirnov, K., Perelgut, S.:
Virtual worlds – past, present, and future: New directions in social computing. Decision
Support Systems, Communities and Social Network 47(3), 204–228 (2009)
13. Middleton, S.E.: Interface agents: A review of the field. Technical Report. University of
Southampton (2000)
14. Mortensen, J., Vinayagamoorthy, V., Slater, M., Steed, A., Lok, B., Whitton, M.C.: Col-
laboration in Tele-Immersive Environments. In: Proc. of the Workshop on Virtual Envi-
ronments, vol. 23, pp. 93–101 (2002)
15. Okita, S.Y., Bailenson, J., Schwartz, D.: The mere belief of social interaction improves
learning. In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1355–1360.
Congnitive Science Society, Austin (2007)
 That Avatar Is Looking at Me! Social Inhibition in Virtual Worlds 467

16. Oliver, I.A., Miller, A.H., Allison, C.: Virtual worlds, real traffic: interaction and adapta-
tion. In: Proceedings of the First Annual ACM SIGMM Conference on Multimedia Sys-
tems, MMSys 2010, pp. 305–316. ACM, New York (2010)
17. Pertaub, D.P., Slater, M., Barker, C.: An experiment on pubic speaking anxiety in response
to three different types of virtual audience. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environ-
ments 11, 68–78 (2002)
18. Sanders, G.S., Baron, R.s., Moore, D.L.: Distraction and social comparison as mediators of
social facilitation effects. J. of Experimental Social Psych. 14, 291–303 (1978)
19. Triplett, N.: The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. Journal of Psychol-
ogy 9, 507–533 (1898)
20. Usoh, M., Catena, E., Arman, S., Slater, M.: Using Presence Questionnaires in Reality.
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 9(5), 497–503 (2000)
21. Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., Ducheneaut, N.: The Proteus effect: Implications of transformed
digital self-representation on online and offline behavior. Communication Research 36(2),
285–312 (2009)
22. Zajonc, R.B.: Social Facilitation. Science 149, 269–274 (1965)
23. Zanbaka, C.A., Ulinski, A.C., Goolkasian, P., Hodges, L.F.: Social responses to virtual
humans: implications for future interface design. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Confer-
ence on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2007, San Jose, California, USA,
April 28 - May 03, pp. 1561–1570. ACM, New York (2007)
24. Zanbaka, C., Goolkasian, P., Hodges, L.F.: Can a virtual cat persuade you? The role of
gender and realism in speaker persuasiveness. In: Proc. CHI 2006, pp. 1153–1162. ACM
Press, New York (2006)
25. Zanbaka, C., Ulinski, A., Goolkasian, P., Hodges, L.F.: Effects of Virtual Human Presence
on Task Performance. In: Proc. ICAT 2004, pp. 174–181 (2004)
26. Zhang, Q., Marksbury, N., Heim, S.: A Case Study of Communication and Social Interac-
tions in Learning in Second Life. In: 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on Sys-
tem Sciences (HICSS), pp. 1–9 (2010)