People, places, and time: a large-scale, longitudinal study
of transformed avatars and environmental context in
group interaction in the metaverse

People, places, and time: a large-scale, longitudinal study
of transformed avatars and environmental context in
group interaction in the metaverse

time, networked, virtual reality, avatars, environments, context, nonverbal behavior

As the metaverse expands, understanding how people use virtual reality to learn and connect is increasingly important. We used the
Transformed Social Interaction paradigm (Bailenson et al., 2004) to examine different avatar identities and environments over time. In Study 1

(n 1⁄4 81), entitativity, presence, enjoyment, and realism increased over 8 weeks. Avatars that resembled participants increased synchrony, similar-
ities in moment-to-moment nonverbal behaviors between participants. Moreover, self-avatars increased self-presence and realism, but

decreased enjoyment, compared to uniform avatars. In Study 2 (n 1⁄4 137), participants cycled through 192 unique virtual environments. As visible
space increased, so did nonverbal synchrony, perceived restorativeness, entitativity, pleasure, arousal, self- and spatial presence, enjoyment,
and realism. Outdoor environments increased perceived restorativeness and enjoyment more than indoor environments. Self-presence and
realism increased over time in both studies. We discuss implications of avatar appearance and environmental context on social behavior in
classroom contexts over time.

Eugy Han 1,*, Mark R. Miller2

, Cyan DeVeaux1

, Hanseul Jun1

, Kristine L. Nowak 3
,

Jeffrey T. Hancock1

, Nilam Ram1,4 and Jeremy N. Bailenson1

https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac031

Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association.

28 October 2022

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