Two intertwined thoughts:
From PlayOn analysis: In World of Warcraft, there is a higher percentage of female characters in Alliance than Horde. On Alliance side, 1 out of 3 characters is female. On Horde side, 1 out of 5 characters is female. Most players would probably also agree that Alliance female characters are far more attractive than Horde female characters.
Behavioral Confirmation: The psychological phenomenon where a perceiver's expectations of a target causes the target to behave in a way that confirms the perceiver's expectations. In the classic study (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977), male undergrads chatted over the phone with female undergrads they did not previously know. Half the male undergrads were given a photo of an attractive woman and the other half were given photos of unattractive women (unbeknownst to the women themselves). This is analogous to interacting with an attractive female Night Elf online.
Unsurprisingly, the male undergrads in the attractive condition were rated by blind coders to be friendlier than the men in the unattractive condition. What was interesting was that the female undergrads who were presumed to be attractive were rated by blind coders to to more friendly, charming, and sociable than the women who were presumed to be unattractive. In other words, the expectation of the men in the attractive condition caused the women to become friendlier, more charming, and more sociable.
Given that Alliance avatars are more attractive than Horde avatars (especially the female avatars), and given that many social interactions on Alliance side are parallels of the classic Behavioral Confirmation study - men interacting with who they believe are attractive women, might this cause Alliance players to become friendlier, more charming, and more sociable in general than Horde players over time regardless of their RL gender or attractiveness? That is to say, a form of behavioral confirmation cascade that has an effect on the community rather than simply the individual level.
Now, it's true that choosing between Alliance and Horde involves personality and motivational differences to begin with (and Dmitri points this out too), but here I'm more interested in the dynamic social engineering that occurs during game-play itself. In other words, could avatar appearance itself be used as a form of social engineering in virtual environments? And if so, are Alliance and Horde players being socially engineered in different ways?
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