2014 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News Archives

February 11, 2014: Superman vs. Voldemort - Game Avatars Affect Real Life Behavior

Superman Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted an experiment using 194 undergraduate students to play a simple game in which they were assigned either an avatar of Superman, Voldemort or a neutral circle, and then were given an extra task to see how their game avatar had affected their personal behavior.

    "It was a very simple, two-dimensional computer shooting game," [researcher Gunwoo] Yoon explained. "Participants were asked to play the game for 5 minutes by using their avatars - with Superman fighting against some villains and Voldemort fighting against some heroes."

    Afterward, the students were asked to take part in a different study, which, they were told, was unrelated to the first.

    In this second study, the students first had to taste, then dole out, their choice of either chocolate or chili sauce to a future participant. They were told to pour the item into a plastic dish and that the future participant would consume all of the edible provided.

    The players who'd had a Superman avatar in the study overwhelmingly chose to pour the sweet chocolate sauce - nearly twice as often as they chose chili - and gave larger servings of chocolate than the dastardly Voldemorts. And just what did those assigned the "He Who Must Not Be Named" avatar serve up? The spicy chili sauce, nearly twice as often as chocolate, and again in larger servings than the kindly Men (and Women) of Steel.

Read the full report at CNet.com.



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