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80 UEC Int’l Mini-Conference No.53
The Influence of Virtual

Non-creature Human-

Like Avatars on the User

Luca Malte Barre Koichi Hirota Sho Sakurai
Department of Informatics Department of Informatics Department of Informatics
University of Electro-Communications University of Electro-Communications University of Electro-Communications
Tokyo, Japan Tokyo, Japan Tokyo, Japan

Introduction Background

In Virtual Reality (VR) the user can explore and interact Proteus Effect
with virtual worlds by embodying a virtual avatar. In The appearance of a virtual avatar can influence the
popular VR applications like VR Chat users can choose users’ behavior. For example:
almost any virtual character as their representation
and engage in different activities. As such, the virtual An attractive avatar can lead to higher intention of
avatars have a high influence on the users’ experience engaging in social activities
in these worlds. It has been shown that these virtual Anthropomorphism
avatars can influence the users’ behavior based on The phenomena of assigning human
their appearance. This holds especially for human-like characteristics to (non-living) objects
avatars. However, there are also avatars that
resembles a human but are not exactly living creatures.
Yet, it is still unclear whether this type of avatars can
also influence the users’ behaviors in a similar way to
the regular human avatars.
[3]
Proposal Experiments

Non-Creature Human-Like Avatars VR Twister

Avatars that are living A VR version of Twister that
creatures like animals but has been used to show that
appear human-like due to the using a human avatar but
phenomena of unintended with different gender can
anthropomorphism. also influence the user’s
For example: A Daikon [1] behavior and perception
Human-Like Avatars [2]
Optitrack Motive
Comparing the non-
creature human-like With Optitrack Motive the users’
avatars to human avatars movement in the real world can be
allows for a better captured precisely and mapped to the
evaluation of the effects virtual avatar in real-time. Users
typically wear black suits with special
markers on it.

Expected Results Future Work

• Non-creature Human-like avatars can • Investigate the influence in a single user
influence the users’ behavior environment
• Weaker than human avatar’s effect • Investigate the influence in a more cooperative
scenario
[1] https://booth.pm/en/items/4112847, Author: kousuke-s
[2] Effect of the Opponent’s Appearance on Interpersonal Cognition that Affects User-to-User Relationship in Virtual Whole-Body Interaction, Sho Sakurai et al, 2021, Fuji Technology Press LTD
[3] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/literary-devices/anthropomorphism/. Parker Yamasaki, 10/2022
.