Individual differences in virtual environment. An experimental research on emotions, behaviour and sense of Presence in Second Life.

The present work explores individual differences of behaviour, interaction, sense of presence and emotional experiencing in the virtual environment of Second Life. First, we evaluated subjects’ cognitive style of interaction (from a cognitive-constructivist perspective) – main assessment on the “control” and “insecurity” dimensions. Subjects were then asked to spend some time into Second Life and their behaviour, emotion and sense of Presence were evaluated. Obtained results show that most of the aspects of subjects’ personality do not change into a virtual world like Second Life; on the other hand this has been perceived as a relatively safe environment, mostly for high insecure subjects