My virtual life or, how people learn to live and to trust inside virtual worlds

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My virtual lifeor, how people learn to live and
to trust inside virtual worlds

• Aleks Krotoski
• Department of Psychology
• University of Surrey

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This talk

• Richard spoke about an example of trust in
  virtual worlds RMT
• Ill be explaining how people live in virtual
  worlds, how they interact in virtual worlds and
  how they grow to trust one another in virtual
  worlds

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Before I get ahead of myself

• The differences between online and offline
• Anonymity
• Physical appearance
• Physical proximity
• Greater transience (more weak ties)
• Absence of social cues
• So how can we expect community to grow?

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Social groups can look like this
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or they can look like this

• London Memorial in the virtual world Second Life
• Between 12-1pm on 7 July 2005, over 150 Second
  Life residents visited. It was open for 7 days
  and racked up thousands of visitors
• Fewer than 10 claimed any British ties
• Makers motivations were altruistic and purely
  community-driven

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Online community I

• In traditional definitions of community,
  thered be no such thing in cyberspace
• Tied to place, experience and artifacts
• To misquote AOL ads, how can you fall for someone
  youve never met?
• But we know thats not true
• Chatrooms, forums, MySpace, Craigs List, London
  Memorial
• These virtual worlds are the places which the
  online communities are tied to, and they all rely
  upon trust heuristics

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Online community II

• Because of their immense size, communities emerge
  as sub-groups (guilds) in the virtual world
  population its an explicit part of the design
  people must rely upon one another to survive
  and advance
• Form for the same reasons offline communities do
• Make friends, provide motivation, offer support,
  meet like-minded others
• Theyve also got their own unique purposes
• Raid, hunt, gather, ensure safety, divide the
  bounty of efforts
• Whatever role trust plays in offline communities,
  it plays in online communities because these
  interactions are human-bound

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Trust in virtual communities I were all in it
together

• Returning to Anonymity
• Perceived similarity (levelling the playing
  field)
• No social cues, so lots of uncertainty
• Expectations of openness and honesty engenders a
  culture of mutual sharing
• Relevant Social Psychological dimension of trust
• Similarity of goals and values
• Expectations of future interaction

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Trust in virtual communities II Actions speak
louder than words

• You dont go into virtual worlds to just be
• These are task-oriented environments, with high
  levels of commitment required
• In the goal-oriented spaces, everyone has a role
  in the social fabric ownership
• Trust develops as a result of historical
  experience. Which leads to

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Trust in virtual communities III Reputation,
reputation, reputation

• Its the only real currency in virtual worlds
• Reputation is the basis for all relationships in
  virtual worlds
• Think eBay
• Visual heuristics of trust players can tell an
  avatars reputation and affiliations just by
  looking

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Trust in virtual worlds III Reputation
(continued)

• Trust is based upon
• past experience
• which is either based upon functional goals or
  pre-existing social relationships
• or some kind of disinterested third party (e.g.,
  Craigs List or MySpace)
• And speaking of social networking applications,
  the same principles work in-world too
• Finally, you must comply
• A non-official policing force in a space where an
  official police is absent
• The emphasis is on friendship and dedication to
  the group
• Rejection is cruel

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Trust in virtual communities III Branding

• RMT leads to business models based upon trust in
  a brand
• More important in social virtual worlds where RMT
  is the game

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In Sum

• Virtual communities operate in very similar ways
  to other communities both on and offline
• They bring together distributed individuals based
  on common experience, motivations and reputation
• This is particularly true for virtual world
  participants because of the explicit social
  design of the software
• There is a great potential for crossover between
  the two spheres, BUT any new implementations
  should be carefully integrated within the
  existing social norms of these valuable virtual
  communities lest trust be undermined.

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Thank you

• Aleks Krotoski
• a.krotoski_at_surrey.ac.uk