Fantasy World Not Necessarily Paradise

The two men in my life (my husband and my son) spend a great deal of their free time playing World of Warcraft, an on-line fantasy game. My son has dabbled around with other on-line games, by my family is, apparently, a WOW family ... and we are not alone. It seems as though many people are opting to socialize virtually rather than in reality. Frankly, it is kind of cute to see my husband and son sitting side by side in our study on quests/missions/raids/whatevers together ... not really what I dreamed of my husband and son doing together ... but father and son togetherness none-the-less.

Anyway, it seems that if people can choose to be Night Elves or Magical Druid Knights and fly with their magic pet monkeys ... well, then people would treat each other without the normal prejudices ... but, apparently, in fantasy games, a study has found that people bring their reality-based prejudices to their virtual worlds. It is a really a shame that people are still racially biased ... especially in a fantasy world where people go to escape the junk of life.

From a research perspective it is interesting that this means that virtual behavior may provide a more accurate indicator of actual social behavior rather than idealized behavior as one might expect in a "fantasy" world. This means that more social experiments might be conducted in fantasy worlds as a means of learning about real world social behavior ... the question is whether or the scientific community will accept avatar behavior as representative of human behavior. There seems to be a need for some more evidence to substantiate the link between "virtual" prejudice and "actual" prejudice ... it could be that prejudices are exaggerated in a "virtual world."

It would be interesting to see a study in which participants are asked to participate in fantasy world for so many hours, during which time, the social experiment is conducted. Then, some other assessment should be conducted to determine the participants' actual behavior in an analogous situation or at least attitudes/prejudices toward social groups of interest (race, gender, etc.). Then, some sort of relationship could be established between the level of prejudiced displayed by an individual and his/her avatar.

OK ... so no matter how nerdy you may think my guys are for playing WOW ... keep in mind that while they are playing fantasy games, I am fantasizing about conducting a following study to a study measuring social biases of people playing fantasy games ... I am the nerd who fantasizes about being the nerd who studies the nerds ... sigh!

~Staci