Comparing technologies for conveying emotions through realistic avatars in virtual reality-based metaverse experiences

With the development of metaverse(s), industry and academia are searching for the best ways to represent users' avatars in shared Virtual Environments (VEs), where real-time communication between users is required. The expressiveness of avatars is crucial for transmitting emotions that are key for social presence and user experience, and are conveyed via verbal and non-verbal facial and body signals. In this paper, two real-time modalities for conveying expressions in Virtual Reality (VR) via realistic, full-body avatars are compared by means of a user study. The first modality uses dedicated hardware (i.e., eye and facial trackers) to allow a mapping between the user’s facial expressions/eye movements and the avatar model. The second modality relies on an algorithm that, starting from an audio clip, approximates the facial motion by generating plausible lip and eye movements. The participants were requested to observe, for both the modalities, the avatar of an actor performing six scenes involving as many basic emotions. The evaluation considered mainly social presence and emotion conveyance. Results showed a clear superiority of facial tracking when compared to lip sync in conveying sadness and disgust. The same was less evident for happiness and fear. No differences were observed for anger and surprise

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Harassment: An Application of Attribution Theory

The social and communication impairments among those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may result in some unknowingly harassing someone while pursuing a romantic interest. Weiner's (1974) Attribution Theory suggests that when people attribute negative behaviors to a condition, they perceive less controllability, and evoke fewer negative emotions and punishments. The authors applied Attribution Theory using a sample of 545 undergraduates who received one of three vignettes depicting a male harassing a female romantic interest (no mention of ASD, mention of ASD, mention of ASD and difficulty with social relationships and communication). Those who received the vignettes that mentioned the perpetrator had ASD perceived the behavior as less controllable and fewer supported punishment. The results demonstrate support for disclosing one's ASD diagnosis and communicating any social or communication difficulties to others in the event there are miscommunications that could lead to punitive consequences

Online Deception and Situations Conducive to the Progression of Non-Payment Fraud

Adopting the criminal event perspective, we explore how online fraudsters make use of urgency cues in their interactions with potential victims throughout the progression of an online nonpayment fraud attempt. Integrating claims from the ‘Interpersonal-Deception Theory’ with situational explanations of crime, we investigate whether fraudsters’ presentations of verbal cues of urgency during the early stages of a criminal event are followed by a consistent presentation of verbal and non-verbal urgency cues. To answer this question, we posted a large number of ‘for-sale’ advertisements over a classified-ad website and interacted with online fraudsters and legitimate users who responded to our ads over email. Our findings highlight the relevance of the criminal event perspective in guiding research on targets and offenders in cyberspace

Avatars and computer-mediated communication: a review of the definitions, uses, and effects of digital representations

Avatars are growing in popularity and present in many interfaces used for computer-mediated communication (CMC) including social media, e-commerce, and education. Communication researchers have been investigating avatars for over twenty years, and an examination of this literature reveals similarities but also notable discrepancies in conceptual definitions. The goal of this review is to provide a general overview of current debates, methodological approaches, and trends in findings. Our review synthesizes previous research in four areas. First, we examine how scholars have conceptualized the term “avatar,” identify similarities and differences across these definitions, and recommend that scholars use the term consistently. Next, we review theoretical perspectives relevant to avatar perception (e.g., the computers as social actors framework). Then, we examine avatar characteristics that communicators use to discern the humanity and social potential of an avatar (anthropomorphism, form realism, behavioral realism, and perceived agency) and discuss implications for attributions and communication outcomes. We also review findings on the social categorization of avatars, such as when people apply categories like sex, gender, race, and ethnicity to their evaluations of digital representations. Finally, we examine research on avatar selection and design relevant to communication outcomes. Here, we review both motivations in CMC contexts (such as self-presentation and identity expression) and potential effects (e.g., persuasion). We conclude with a discussion of future directions for avatar research and propose that communication researchers consider avatars not just as a topic of study, but also as a tool for testing theories and understanding critical elements of human communication. Avatar mediated environments provide researchers with a number of advantageous technological affordances that can enable manipulations that may be difficult or inadvisable to execute in natural environments. We conclude by discussing the use of avatar research to extend communication theory and our understanding of communication processes

Nonverbal Auditory Cues Allow Relationship Quality to be Inferred During Conversations.

UNLABELLED: The claim that nonverbal cues provide more information than the linguistic content of a conversational exchange (the Mehrabian Conjecture) has been widely cited and equally widely disputed, mainly on methodological grounds. Most studies that have tested the Conjecture have used individual words or short phrases spoken by actors imitating emotions. While cue recognition is certainly important, speech evolved to manage interactions and relationships rather than simple information exchange. In a cross-cultural design, we tested participants' ability to identify the quality of the interaction (rapport) in naturalistic third party conversations in their own and a less familiar language, using full auditory content versus audio clips whose verbal content has been digitally altered to differing extents. We found that, using nonverbal content alone, people are 75-90% as accurate as they are with full audio cues in identifying positive vs negative relationships, and 45-53% as accurate in identifying eight different relationship types. The results broadly support Mehrabian's claim that a significant amount of information about others' social relationships is conveyed in the nonverbal component of speech. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-021-00386-y

Social Rejection, Avatar Creation, & Self-Esteem

Individuals use avatars as a means to interact with the virtual world. Self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988) would suggest that creating an avatar could allow individuals to focus on their positive traits to mitigate threats to self-worth. Yet, a negative correlation exists between self-esteem and idealized avatars (Bessière et al., 2007; Pringle, 2015; Wang et al., 2014). To resolve this discrepancy, a 2 (Threat/No Threat) x 2 (Avatar/No Avatar) design was implemented to simultaneously explore the effect of social rejection on avatar creation and the effect that avatar creation may hold in buffering against losses in self-esteem. It was predicted that individuals who experience social rejection will create avatars that are more idealized (more similar to the ideal self and more attractive) relative to those in the control condition. It was also predicted that the act of creating an avatar would mitigate the loss in self-esteem experienced by those faced with social rejection compared to control and that this effect would be mediated by avatar idealization

Perceção social da violação: o efeito do tamanho dos olhos, da categorização da mulher em subtipos e do género do observador

Este trabalho analisou o efeito do tamanho dos olhos, do subtipo de mulher e do género do observador na perceção social dos intervenientes de uma situação de violação (vítima e agressor). Foi utilizado um desenho experimental de 3 (tamanho dos olhos: pequeno vs. normal vs. grande) X 2 (subtipo de mulher: tradicional vs. não-tradicional) X 2 (género do observador: feminino vs. masculino). Os participantes (90 homens e 90 mulheres) observaram uma fotografia com um rosto de mulher (com manipulação do tamanho dos olhos) e avaliaram o grau de atração inicial, honestidade e identificação com o estímulo. Posteriormente, leram um cenário de violação com manipulação do subtipo de mulher (imaginando que a vítima era o estímulo da foto) e avaliaram o grau de responsabilidade da vítima e do agressor. Os resultados mostraram efeitos significativos do tamanho dos olhos em todas as variáveis, observando-se que a mulher com olhos grandes foi percecionada de forma mais positiva (maior grau de atração, honestidade e identificação), foi menos responsabilizada pela situação e ativou um maior grau de responsabilização do agressor. O género do observador apresentou um efeito no grau de atração inicial (os homens consideraram o estímulo mais atraente do que as mulheres), mas não parece ter influência nas atribuições de responsabilidade. O subtipo de mulher teve um efeito no grau de responsabilização da vítima, uma vez que a mulher não-tradicional foi menos responsabilizada do que a tradicional. Os resultados foram discutidos tendo por base a importância dos atributos pessoais da vítima e do observador na perceção social da violação.Universidade do Algarve, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociai

Virtual Team Success: The Impact of Leadership Style and Project Management Experience

The ability of project managers to effectively lead virtual teams is an important factor in the teams\u27 success. Since the 1990s, organizations\u27 use of virtual teams to plan and execute projects has increased, yet virtual teams continue to have high failure rates. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine whether a relationship exists between leadership styles, years of project management experience, and success of virtual teams. I used the path-goal theory of leadership as the theoretical framework for this study. A nonpurposive random sample of 160 project managers in the San Francisco Bay Area who had obtained the Project Management Professional-® designation issued by the Project Management Institute completed an online survey. Multiple regression was conducted to determine whether a statistically significant relationship existed among variables. The results of the regression analysis were statistically significant, F(2, 142) = 39.21, p = .000, R2 = .35, indicating that a combination of leadership style and project management experience can predict success of virtual teams. Leaders of organizations can use the findings of this study in training virtual team leaders. The findings may contribute to social change in organizations that use or plan to use virtual teams in their operations. Team leaders can apply the findings in developing virtual team management strategies. Effective management may reduce the failure rate of virtual teams, which could lead to higher job satisfaction and employee retention among team members, increased employment opportunities, increased urbanization and gentrification of local communities, and reduced flight of capital. Effective management of virtual teams could thus support socioeconomic empowerment and a higher standard of living in local communities and improve knowledge and tolerance of cultural and geographic diversity