Exposing human nature through virtual environments

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Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

A common misperception about open-ended virtual environments (in their capacity as social or entertainment mediums) is that they are primarily free of consequence. If you spend a lot of time with virtual environment newbies, you'll see that perception crop up again and again. Indeed, mainstream culture promulgates the idea to a statistically significant degree.

If you consider what you know of human nature, and consider what people might do given a complete absence of consequence -- well, the very notion can be quite appalling. Indeed, some few people respond exactly as we might expect, causing chaos and disruption at will, feeling free of consequence or retribution.

The surprising thing is that the majority do not.

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Exposing human nature through virtual environments originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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