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In ideation meetings, balanced participation and receptivity are important. However, they can be inhibited by the impact of differences in social categories among the participants, such as age and gender. Virtual reality (VR) environments have potential to mitigate this inhibition because they can manipulate appearance-based social cues that impact the perception of social categories. We conducted an experiment with 16 groups of four of different genders and ages (n=64), and divided them into two conditions: (1) avatars with appearance-based social cues, which have avatar-self appearance similarity, and (2) avatars without appearance-based social cues, which have no avatar-self appearance similarity and are identical among participants, to investigate the impact of avatars with or without appearance-based social cues on balanced participation and receptivity. Prior to sessions in VR, participants engaged in a face-to-face icebreaker to ensure awareness of the other participants' ages and genders. Despite this awareness, results showed avatars without appearance-based social cues promoted balanced participation compared to avatars with appearance-based social cues. Specifically, they had a better balance of participation in the number of spoken words, a better balance of social influence among participants. Additionally, they slightly promoted receptivity. Specifically, they had more positive socio-emotional statements (e.g., “good”, “nice”).
Research papers (academic journals)
