ABSTRACT

Over a decade of research on the Proteus effect in numerous contexts suggests that people conform in behavior and attitudes to their avatars’ characteristics. In order to provide clarity about the reliability and size of the Proteus effect, a meta-analysis was conducted with 46 quantitative experimental studies in which avatars with specific characteristics were randomly assigned to participants. Results indicate a relatively consistent effect size (between .22 and .26, depending on subset of studies examined) and nearly all variance explained. Unexplained variance differed between studies that used behavioral or attitudinal measures, while studies which examined potential moderators explained all variance. Overall, this research suggests that the Proteus effect is a reliable phenomenon, with a small-but-approaching-medium effect size according to a traditional rule of thumb, but is relatively large compared to other digital media effects examined in previous meta analyses.

摘要

关于蛋白质变形效应的十多年研究在许多情况下都表明人们在行为和态度上与虚拟角色的特征保持一致。为了提供有关Proteus效应的可靠性和大小的清晰信息，对46项定量实验研究进行了荟萃分析，其中将具有特定特征的化身随机分配给参与者。结果表明效果相对一致（介于0.22和0.26之间，取决于所研究的子集），并且几乎所有的方差都得到了解释。使用行为或态度测量的研究之间无法解释的差异有所不同，而研究潜在主持人的研究则解释了所有差异。总体而言，这项研究表明，Proteus效应是一种可靠的现象，根据传统的经验法则，Proteus效应的大小较小，但接近中度效应，