People, places, and time: a large-scale, longitudinal study of transformed avatars and environmental context in group interaction in the metaverse

Abstract As the metaverse expands, understanding how people use virtual reality to learn and connect is increasingly important. We used Transformed Social Interaction paradigm (Bailenson et al., 2004) examine different avatar identities environments over time. In Study 1 (n = 81), entitativity, presence, enjoyment, realism increased 8 weeks. Avatars that resembled participants synchrony, similarities in moment-to-moment nonverbal behaviors between participants. Moreover, self-avatars self-presence realism, but decreased compared uniform avatars. 2 137), cycled through 192 unique environments. visible space increased, so did perceived restorativeness, pleasure, arousal, self- spatial realism. Outdoor restorativeness enjoyment more than indoor Self-presence time both studies. discuss implications of appearance environmental context on social behavior classroom contexts