Exposing human nature through virtual environments

A common misperception about open-ended virtual environments (in their capacity as social or entertainment mediums) is that they are primarily free of consequence. If you spend a lot of time with virtual environment newbies, you'll see that perception crop up again and again. Indeed, mainstream culture promulgates the idea to a statistically significant degree.

If you consider what you know of human nature, and consider what people might do given a complete absence of consequence — well, the very notion can be quite appalling. Indeed, some few people respond exactly as we might expect, causing chaos and disruption at will, feeling free of consequence or retribution.

The surprising thing is that the majority do not.

Actually, in a sense it borders on the astonishing.

The majority of new users may well suffer numerous faux pas adjusting to new conventions and social circumstances, but the really interesting thing is that despite the initial misconception of the new environment being consequence-free, most people behave very much like they normally would.

Oh, granted, being in a virtual environment can be a lot like being drunk. You're cut off from all sorts of autonomic biological feedback mechanisms that are intended to regulate and moderate your behavior among your fellows and peers. A layer of regulation is stripped away, "baring the soul" as some would have it.

Not everyone's an angry and destructive drunk at heart, however. Most people retain their civility, thoughtfulness and a trend towards generosity, though at times social behavior in either direction can become a little immoderate.

That virtual environments, like Second Life, manifestly have not and do not rapidly devolve into random and uncontrollable anarchy is an interesting commentary on how little we know, and how much we assume about human nature.

Sure, some people have very dark sides indeed, and that element will probably always be with us, but as virtual environments continue to enmesh themselves into the mainstream, the time will come when your kids or your grandkids won't even remember a time when they were not the norm, and the perceptions of consequence in virtual environments will come to match the realities.

Just at the moment, it is a short-lived, though golden time to see just how inspiring ordinary people can be.