A recent BBC article discussed the ways that social scientists and academics are using virtual worlds to study human behavior. A review in the journal Science reveals that researchers are able to use online societies as "virtual laboratories" to gain insights into real life, and suggests that MMO gaming behavior and online socialization can help scientists studying ideas about government and even the individual sense of self-- while other researchers are beginning to identify behaviors specific to online worlds and how those differ from real-world interaction.
According to the article, Dr. Willian Bainbridge, the head of "Human-Centered Computing" at the US National Science Foundation wrote in Science about how studies in online worlds offer scientists new opportunities by eliminating some of the problems researchers encounter when gathering subjects in the real world-- primarily, Bainbridge said, difficulties finding the right amount of research subjects quickly, or securing funds to conduct the research. The high userbase in popular online worlds (Bainbridge cited World of Warcraft and Second Life as examples) means a ready pool of subjects that can be recruited over long periods of time for little cost.
The worlds themselves also gather statistics on player behavior that scientists can easily analyze, Bainbridge added.
Early studies of online worlds have already begun to reveal the ways in which players' behavior mirrors their real-life-- for example, user avatars keep the same radius of personal space as people tend to in the real world, standing about the same distance apart. Many commentators also highlighted differences between individual online communities -- like the tendency of Second Life users to create a single character with whom they closely identify, while WoW users tend to make several different ones which, Bainbridge observes, they view as possessions. Bainbridge believes variations like these will shed light on people's ideas about self and presentation to others.
The article says online games could also let scientists run large studies of alternative governmental regimes that would be, as Bainbridge wrote, "next to impossible in society at large." out large-scale studies of alternative governmental regimes that would be "next to impossible in society at large," he wrote.
For example, Bainbridge wrote, WoW players' ongoing faction wars over valuable resources could be viewed as a "field experiment" in "how individuals can be induced to cooperate in producing public goods".
Makes you wonder if someone's jotting notes on your gameplay patterns! Many active users of WoW and other online games and communities often note, for example, their own tendency to gravitate towards certain types of characters and experience, and wonder what those choices might say about them. Perhaps we'll soon know more.
[Via BBC News]
