Understanding the Influence of Cultural Dimensions on the Interpretative Ability of People to Infer Personality from the Avatars: Evidence from Cultural Dimensions of Greece, Pakistan, Russia, and Singapore

Abstract

Avatar is a customized cartoon representation of the self and many people develop inferences about individuals’ online representations through their avatar’s facial appearance. Research has shown that avatars can signal information about the personality and social desires of a person [1]. Nonetheless, customizing an avatar enables control of self-representation that could potentially moderate the true personality traits of an individual. The customized facial appearance of the avatar affects people’s ability to draw expressions [2], whereas, several cultural dimensions affect the interpretative ability of the people to construct personality inferences from the facial appearance of avatars. We found a significant relationship between neuroticism to uncertainty avoidance and masculinity, whereas, negative relationships were found between extraversion and masculinity, and agreeableness to uncertainty avoidance. The study uses three-dimensional avatars to capture detailed features and expressions on avatar faces.