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Researchers at Penn State have measured responses to avatars rated on a scale of attractiveness:
In a study of how people interacted with avatars in an online game, women received less help from fellow players than men when they operated an unattractive avatar and when they used a male avatar, said T. Franklin Waddell, a doctoral candidate in mass communications, Penn State.
"It doesn't matter if you have an ugly avatar or not, if you're a man, you'll still receive about the same amount of help," said Waddell, who worked with James Ivory, associate professor of communication, Virginia Tech. "However, if you are a woman and operate an unattractive avatar, you will receive significantly less help."
The researchers used six different avatars to study reactions to help requests among 2,300 players of the online game, World of Warcraft. The avatars represented male and female creatures across three different levels of attractiveness. Prior to this study, participants had evaluated the levels of attractiveness as high, medium and low.
WoW racism at work: the highly attractive avatars were blood elves, the somewhat attractive avatars were night elves, and the unattractive avatars were orcs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:14AM
Back when I played WoW I would often refuse to help/ignore players that would claim to be a female solely to get help. It had nothing to do with whether or not they actually were a female, it was the fact they used having a vagina as leverage that made me dismiss the requests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @08:15AM
Many years ago, I was chatting with a friend in... some chatroom somewhere. She asked me if I knew how to do something (using my name and all, so there would be no mistake). Within seconds, another male had butted in, not knowing that she wasn't using the software he thought she was, and was just trying to explain to her how to do what he thought she was trying to do.
He was trying to "move in on" the girl, which was very funny. I did suggest that she wasn't going to sleep with him just for his talking to her on a chat board, but that didn't stop him. Gotta get that dick out there somehow.