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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.
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
Universität der Bundeswehr München, Neubiberg, Germany
Radiah Rivu, Ville Mäkelä & Florian Alt
LMU Munich, Munich, Germany
Yumeng Zhou, Robin Welsch & Ville Mäkelä
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
Ville Mäkelä
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- Ville Mäkelä
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Correspondence toRadiah Rivu.
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Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy
Carmelo Ardito
Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Rosa Lanzilotti
Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Alessio Malizia
Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK
Helen Petrie
Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Antonio Piccinno
Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Giuseppe Desolda
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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