Manifestations of Body Image and Self-Esteem in Virtual Avatar Creation

Abstract:

Past research has shown that a person’s self-esteem levels can be related to how that person creates a virtual avatar meant to represent themselves. In this study, participants will be asked to create an avatar that represents themselves in The Sims 4, and then be asked to complete a shortened version of the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory and respond to original questions that we have developed. Using these avatars and responses, we will evaluate if there is a relationship between a person’s self-esteem and how similar or different their avatar is to their actual self. We hypothesize that participants who have low self-esteem will create avatars that are more idealized versions of themselves, while participants with high self-esteem will create avatars that are realistic representations of themselves. Additionally, we hypothesize that participants with low self-esteem will assign more negative than positive traits to their avatar, while participants with high self-esteem will do the opposite. We based these hypotheses on self-discrepancy theory, which posits that people have three separate self-concepts: the actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self. We believe that participants with low self-esteem will create an avatar that largely represents their ideal self, while participants with high self-esteem will create an avatar that is closer to their actual self.