To examine the expression of personality in virtual worlds (VWs), the authors tracked the behavioral and linguistic output of 76 students continuously over a 6-week period in the VW Second Life (SL). Behavioral metrics in SL were consistent over time, but low stabilities were observed for linguistic metrics. To examine the ways in which personality manifested in SL, participant’s Big Five scores were correlated with their virtual behavioral and linguistic metrics. For example, Conscientiousness was correlated with many metrics related to geographical movement; however, there was low overlap with findings from previous studies. The authors provide some reasons for this low concordance. Their study hints at the potential of leveraging VWs to understand the link not only between personality and behavior but also among other social and psychological phenomena as well.
BackM.SchukleS.EgloffB. (2008). How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1116–1122.
2.
BackM.StopferJ.VazireS.GaddisS.SchmukleS.EgloffB.GoslingS. D. (2010). Facebook profiles reflect actual personality not self-idealization. Psychological Science, 21, 372–374.
3.
BailensonJ.YeeN. (2006). A longitudinal study of task performance, head movements, subjective report, simulator sickness, and transformed social interaction in collaborative virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 699–716.
4.
CrystalD. (2001). Language and the Internet.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
5.
FunderD.SneedC. (1993). Behavioral manifestations of personality: An ecological approach to judgmental accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 479–490.
6.
GillA.OberlanderJ.AustinE. (2006). Rating e-mail personality at zero acquaintance. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 497–507.
7.
GoldbergL. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In MervieldeI.DearyI.De FruytF.OstendorfF. (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7–28). Tilburg, Netherlands: Tilburg University Press.
8.
GoslingS.KoS.MannarelliT.MorrisM. (2002). A room with a cue: Judgments of personality based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379–398.
9.
HirshJ.PetersonJ. (2009). Personality and language use in self-narratives. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 524–527.
10.
KennyD.HornerC.KashyD.ChuL. (1992). Consensus at zero acquaintance: Replication, behavioral cues, and stability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 88–97.
11.
LingR.BaronN. (2007). Text messaging and IM: Linguistic comparison of American college data. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26, 291–298.
12.
MarcusB.MachilekF.SchutzA. (2006). Personality in cyberspace: Personal web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 1014–1031.
13.
MehlM.GoslingS.PennebakerJ. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862–877.
14.
MehlM.PennebakerJ. (2003). The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students' daily social environment and natural conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 857–870.
15.
PennebakerJ.BoothR.FrancisM. (2007). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count [Computer software]. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
16.
PennebakerJ.KingL. (1999). Linguistic styles: Language use as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1296–1312.
17.
RentfrowP.GoslingS. (2006). Message in a ballad: The role of music preferences in interpersonal perception. Psychological Science, 17, 236–242.
18.
ShermanR.FunderD. (2009). Evaluating correlations in studies of personality and behavior: Beyond the number of significant findings to be expected by chance. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 1053–1063.
19.
TagliamonteS.DenisD. (2008). Linguistic ruin? LOL! Instant messaging and teen language. American Speech, 83, 3–34.
20.
VazireS.GoslingS. (2004). e-perceptions: Personality impressions based on personal websites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 123–132.
21.
WaltherJ.GayG.HancockJ. (2005). How do communication and technology researchers study the internet?Journal of Communication, 55, 632–657.
22.
WebbE.CampbellD.SchwartzR.SechrestL. (1966). Unobtrusive measures: Non-reactive research in the social sciences.
Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
WilliamsD.YeeN.CaplanS. (2008). Who plays, how much, and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, 993–1018.
25.
YarkoniT. (in press). Personality in 100,000 words: A large scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality.
26.
YeeN. (2006). The demographics, motivations, and derived experiences of users of massively multi-user online graphical environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 309–329.
27.
YeeN.BailensonJ. (2008). A method for longitudinal behavioral data collection in Second Life. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 17, 594–596.
