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When Friends Become Strangers: Understanding the Influence of Avatar Gender on Interpersonal Distance in Virtual Reality

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12936))

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how mismatches between biological gender and avatar gender affect interpersonal distance (IPD) in virtual reality (VR). An increasing number of VR experiences and online platforms like Rec Room and VRChat allow users to assume other genders through customized avatars. While the effects of acquaintanceship and gender have been studied with regard to proxemic behavior, the effect of changed genders remains largely unexplored. We conducted a user study (N = 40, friends = 20, strangers = 20) where users played a two-player collaborative game in Rec Room using both male and female avatars. We found that with swapped avatar genders, the preferred distance increased between friends but not between strangers. We discuss how our results can inform researchers and designers in the domain of multi-user VR.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rec Room: https://recroom.com/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Rec Room tutor who aided in recruiting participants for our study. The presented work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under project no. 425869382 and by dtec.bw – Digitalization and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr [Voice of Wisdom].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universität der Bundeswehr München, Neubiberg, Germany

    Radiah Rivu, Ville Mäkelä & Florian Alt

  2. LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Yumeng Zhou, Robin Welsch & Ville Mäkelä

  3. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

    Ville Mäkelä

Authors
  1. Radiah Rivu
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  2. Yumeng Zhou
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  3. Robin Welsch
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  4. Ville Mäkelä
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  5. Florian Alt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Radiah Rivu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Rivu, R., Zhou, Y., Welsch, R., Mäkelä, V., Alt, F. (2021). When Friends Become Strangers: Understanding the Influence of Avatar Gender on Interpersonal Distance in Virtual Reality. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12936. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85607-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85607-6_16

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85607-6

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