online avatars — visual representations of human beings — are everywhere these days. From mainstream examples, like the photos or other images Gmail users use to represent themselves, to extravagant armor-clad monsters in role-playing games, it’sbecoming increasingly common for people to go through the process of deciding how they want to be represented in an online space.
互联网头像——大家在网上的视觉形象——现在随处可见。从Gmail邮箱用户用来象征我们的照片或图像等主流风格的互联网头像，到网游里身披铠甲的怪兽等90后风格的互联网头像，大家愈加常见地倾向于要经过一番考虑，为自己在互联网空间里饰演什么样的形象做出选择。
But what goes into that decision? What can a given avatar tell us about the person who created it? It’s a hot area of study given the proliferation of interesting online worlds, and a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Katrina Fong and Raymond Mar of York University seeks to shed some light on it.
头像的选择里包括了什么原因呢?大家能从大家选择的互联网头像里看出挑选它的人有什么特质?伴随互联网世界愈加趣味横生，欣欣向荣，上述问题已经成为一个热点研究范围。《个性与社会心理学通报》的撰稿人，纽约大学的卡翠娜·方和雷蒙德·玛尔试图对这一问题进行探索。
As the researchers explain, to a certain extent people seem to react to encountering a new avatar online in similar ways to how they react to encountering a new person in real life. For example, “Tattooed avatars … are perceived as being sensation-seeking and risk-taking,” and these sorts of judgements “extend to the credibility of the avatar’s user.”
研究者称，某种意义上说，对于自己所面对的陌生互联网头像，大家的态度像他们在实质日常面对陌生人的态度。举例说，“带纹身的互联网头像会叫人感觉用户爱造乱子，寻求刺激”，这种判断常常“进步为对用户人品的判断”。
These findings suggesting that people have a natural tendency to make their online avatars reflect who they are as a person, led the researchers to ask a simple question: “Do these cues accurately reflect and communicate an individual’s real-world traits?” To test this, they ran a study on a group of Canadian college students.
研究显示，大家有一种自然的倾向，他们所挑选的互联网头像和自己的个性非常像。正因为此，研究者们发出了一个简单的问题：“这类互联网图像真的可以如实反映并传达大家在现实日常的人格特点吗?”为了验证这一点，他们对一组加拿大大学生进行了研究调查。
In Phase 1, some of the students came into a computer lab, where they first took personality inventory tests that measure the so-called “Big Five” characteristics , and then created online avatars using the site weeworld.com.
在第一个研究阶段，一些学生来到计算机实验室里，在这里他们同意了人格量表评测，以知道他们的“五大项”人格特点，然后这类学生在weeworld.com网站上设置了我们的互联网头像。
In Phase 2, a separate group of students took an online survey in which they “were shown a subset of 15 to 16 of the avatars created in Phase 1,” asked to rate the personality of the avatar’s creator, and asked if they’d want to be friends with him or her. Then the researchers compared the observer-ratings to the results of the personality tests taken by the avatar creators.
在第二个研究阶段，另一组学生在网上同意调查，研究者“将第一阶段中产生的互联网头像中挑选出15-16个组成一个子集并将之展示给这类学生，并需要他们对头像用户的人格特点打分，评判他们会不会想与之结交朋友等等。然后研究者们将第二组观看头像的人对头像设置者进行的人格评分与第一组设置头像的人对我们的人格评分进行比对。
What they found was that the avatars provided accurate information about “extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism but not conscientiousness or openness.” In other words, those cues we use to give people hints as to who we are in real life — various subtle decisions pertaining to clothes and hair, for example — seem to translate to the online world, at least when it comes to communicating certain information.
他们发现的结果是，互联网头像在“外向性”、“随和性”和“情绪不稳定性”上提供的信息是准确的，但在开放性和尽责性两个方面提供的信息则并不准确。换句话说，大家通过互联网头像传达给大家的，关于大家在现实日常人格特点的暗示信息——这其中包含对头像的服装和发型的选择等很多微妙的决策活动)——是可以被互联网世界中的大家译解的，至少在某些信息方面。
In a way, this points to the limitations of online environments. It would be nice if these environments really took us out of ourselves, if they expanded our horizons, perhaps making us more open to new experiences and more empathetic toward others as a result. But they don’t necessarily do that — a lot of the time, all they do is replicate andreinforce existing offline social dynamics and prejudices. Even when in unfamiliar online settings, we have a tendency to seek out the familiar and the comforting.
另一个方面看，研究结果也指出了互联网环境中存在的种种限制原因。互联网环境扩展了大家的视线，可能还会让大家以更开放的心态历程新的事物，对别的人更有同情心，假如互联网环境也能让大家完全展示真我就好了。可是结果好像并不尽然——在不少状况下，互联网环境只不过复制并强化了现实社会中的交际规则，人际关系偏见。甚至当大家置身于陌生的互联网空间时，大家也倾向于探寻自己熟知的和让人愉悦的东西。
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（责任编辑：何莹莹）
