Avatar or human, who is experiencing it? Impact of social interaction in virtual gaming worlds on personal space

Virtual gaming worlds support rich social interaction in which players use avatars to collaborate, compete, and communicate across distance. Motivated by the increasing reliance on mediated social contact, this research examined whether virtual shared space and avatar properties shape personal space regulation in ways that parallel face to face encounters. Three experiments tested how virtual shared space, avatar agency, and avatar anthropomorphism influence interpersonal distance. Across studies, virtual comfort distance and psychological distance were used as complementary indicators of changes in personal space, and physical comfort distance was additionally assessed in a subset of conditions with a physically present human partner. Experiment 1 showed that, when interacting with a human driven partner in the laboratory, occupying a shared virtual space reliably reduced comfort distance and increased psychological closeness compared with interacting in separate virtual spaces, even after controlling for physical shared space. Experiment 2 replicated the virtual shared space effect with computer driven partners in an online Virtual gaming world setting, indicating that reduced interpersonal distance does not depend on human agency alone. Experiment 3 revealed that anthropomorphic avatars increased comfort toward computer driven partners, whereas avatar form had little impact when the partner was known to be human. Together, the findings indicate that virtual shared space, perceived agency, and avatar appearance jointly shape personal space regulation in digital environments and offer actionable guidance for designing avatars and virtual spaces that foster approach oriented, prosocial interaction.