Researchers Find Racial Bias In Virtual Worlds

[jason]

Slashdot | Researchers Find Racial Bias In Virtual Worlds

“Real-world behaviours and racial biases could carry forward into virtual worlds such as Second Life, social psychologists say. According to a study that was conducted in There.com, virtual world avatars respond to social cues in the same ways that people do in the real world.

Users, who were unaware that they were part of a psychological study, were approached by a researcher’s avatar for either a ‘foot-in-the-door’ (FITD) or ‘door-in-the-face’ (DITF) experiment. While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took the form of a dark-skinned avatar.”

Read more at Researchers find racial bias in virtual worlds - Internet - iTnews Australia

No, I have no question about the assertion of racial bias in Virtual World. I’m just reading Lisa Nakamura’s Digitizing Race, which is interesting. However, the research seems pretty lame for reasons commented on in the comments on the first two links, and others. Would be nice if peeps reported on research that would appear better constructed to take up what I think is an important issue.