Treating Avatars Like People

Nicholas Carr reports on the recent experiments that showed that people treated avatars (virtual, often cartoon-like representations of people) much like they treat real people in a repeat of the infamous Milgram experiments of the 1960s. This also relates to the broader findings of Stanford Prof Byron Reeves in his book 'The Media Equation'. The finding there was that people treat computers more like people than one would expect, even when they absolutely know its an artificial entity. Some of our reactions are wired in quite illogical ways. We attempted to use this effect with the talking Mr Clean. Always thought this would have implications for marketing, but nothing impressive so far.