Social Rejection, Avatar Creation, & Self-Esteem

Abstract

Individuals use avatars as a means to interact with the virtual world. Self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988) would suggest that creating an avatar could allow individuals to focus on their positive traits to mitigate threats to self-worth. Yet, a negative correlation exists between self-esteem and idealized avatars (Bessière et al., 2007; Pringle, 2015; Wang et al., 2014). To resolve this discrepancy, a 2 (Threat/No Threat) x 2 (Avatar/No Avatar) design was implemented to simultaneously explore the effect of social rejection on avatar creation and the effect that avatar creation may hold in buffering against losses in self-esteem. It was predicted that individuals who experience social rejection will create avatars that are more idealized (more similar to the ideal self and more attractive) relative to those in the control condition. It was also predicted that the act of creating an avatar would mitigate the loss in self-esteem experienced by those faced with social rejection compared to control and that this effect would be mediated by avatar idealization.