When an individual embodies an avatar, the latter's characteristics or stereotype can change the individual's behavior and attitudes; this is known as the Proteus effect. Here, we looked at whether the embodiment of an avatar resembling an elderly adult (seen from a first-person perspective and facing a virtual mirror) changed mentally represented physical activity in a motor imagery task performed by young adult participants (N = 52). To ensure that the impact of embodiment of an elderly avatar on the motor imagery task was not influenced by a potentially confounded stereotype assimilation effect (due to the mere presence of an avatar), a "young" avatar and an "elderly" avatar were always present together in the virtual environment-even though only one (the self-avatar) was embodied at a given time. We found that it took longer for the participants to perform the motor imagery task with the elderly self-avatar than with the young self-avatar. The more negative the participant's beliefs about motor activity in the elderly, the greater the observed effect of the avatar on motor imagery performance. We conclude that knowledge about the characteristics of an embodied avatar can modify the subject's level of mentally represented physical activity.

中文翻译：

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体现“老人”化身对运动图像的影响。

当一个人体现化身时，化身的特征或刻板印象可以改变其行为和态度。这就是Proteus效应。在这里，我们研究了类似于老年人（从第一人称视角观看并面对虚拟镜子）的化身的体现方式是否改变了由年轻成年人参与者执行的运动成像任务中的心理活动（N = 52）。为了确保老年人化身的化身对运动图像任务的影响不受可能混淆的刻板印象同化作用（由于仅存在化身）的影响，始终使用“年轻”化身和“老年人”化身即使在给定的时间仅体现了一个（自我化身），也可以在虚拟环境中共同呈现这些信息。我们发现，与年长的自我化身相比，参与者在老年人的化身上执行运动成像任务所花费的时间更长。参与者对老年人运动活动的信念越消极，观察到的化身对运动影像表现的影响就越大。我们得出的结论是，关于化身化身的特征的知识可以改变受试者的心理活动水平。