Truth Bomb Tuesday: This is weird, but it works.
I’m trying to stay on top with where we’re going with AI… and having to regularly stop and put my mind back together.
Anyway, one of the things I stumbled across is something called the Proteus Effect.
The basic idea here is that people change their behaviours based on what avatars they’re using in virtual spaces. (Proteus, in Greek mythology, was a shapeshifter.)
So, if you have a tall avatar, you act more confidently. If you have a sexy avatar, you’re likely to be more flirtatious.
(The original paper is called “The Proteus effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior” by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson out of Stanford University, if you’re interested.)
But it doesn’t stop there. They also find that not only does avatar choice affect the way you behave in virtual spaces, it also changes the way you behave out in the real world.
Wild.
This has become one of the bearing points in designing virtual spaces. If you only let your users choose war-like and aggressive avatars, then you can probably expect user interactions to be a bit aggressive.
But I also think it says a lot about how our psychology operates.
… and how we can hack it!
The leading theory about why the Proteus effect exists is the idea that we have a natural tendency to want to conform to expectations. If you were to suddenly put on a police officer’s uniform, you will feel a strong compulsion to behave like a police officer.
In this theory, good chunks of our ‘personality’ are simply performative, and curated for the world around us.
And it’s why things like school uniforms exist. The school uniform embodies a set of expectations (good behaviour etc.) which help the people wearing them conform to those expectations.
So, if all this is true, what’s the uniform of success?
Well, the simplest answer is look at what your real estate agent is wearing. They give a lot of care to their appearance because they want to convey success to their clients.
But this is a particular definition of success. It’s a common one, but by far the only way to win at life.
So before you start hacking your behaviour by changing your appearance, you need to know what your own definition of success is.
And maybe it’s not general, but specific.
For example, say you wanted to exercise more. What would happen if you bought your local gyms shirt and wore it to work every day? What would happen to your reality if people started calling you ‘the guy who always wear’s the Ted’s Gym shirt’?
Or say you wanted to eat healthier. What would happen if you printed up a shirt that said “I love salad,” and started wearing that everywhere you went?
Once you set an expectation in people’s mind, there’s a strong compulsion to fulfill it.
I feel like there’s got to be a lot we can do with this.
We’re funny little robots after all.
DB.