Self-presence: Body, emotion, and identity extension into the virtual self

Our media landscape increasingly facilitates the creation and use of virtual self-representations, i.e., avatars. As a result, there is a growing body of research that focuses on avatar use and its effects. The present dissertation aims to contribute to and standardize this research by developing a conceptual framework that describes the ways people connect to their avatars on three neurologically-defined levels of self: body, emotion, and identity. The concept of self-presence is at the heart of this framework and is this dissertation's main focus. After carefully defining self-presence and offering its operationalization, Self-Presence Questionnaire (SPQ), the majority of the dissertation is dedicated to examining self-presence and the SPQ within a variety of virtual contexts, from collaborative student-oriented virtual environments to multiplayer online games to a movement-based console game. Results from five studies suggest that self-presence is associated with numerous constructs, including game genre, physiological responses to avatar use, math task performance after avatar use, and avatar customization, personalization, and gender. Overall, the dissertation supports the claim that self-presence is an internally consistent, reliable, valid, and valuable concept for avatar-use research, but there are still many open questions regarding the nature of self-presence. Research in this area may eventually lead to a full theory of self-presence, thereby contributing to a better understanding of our evolving media landscape and perhaps even our selves.