Observations on Virtual Reality Avatar Alignment with Research Participants’ Skin Tone and Gender

Previous research has drawn attention to the fact that Virtual Reality (VR) technology is primarily designed around the interests and needs of male, western, educated, and wealthy individuals. In this paper, we look specifically at the avatars used in VR research. We analyzed 40 recent studies in which research participants embodied full avatars or were given virtual hands. While nearly every study matched the gender of the participant to the gender of the avatar, similar efforts were not made regarding skin color. We draw attention to two serious problems in VR research: the explicit and implicit exclusion of participants on the basis of skin color through avatar design. Explicit exclusion, in which only participants whose skin tones matched the light-skinned avatar were recruited occurred in 5% of the studies analyzed. Implicit exclusion occurred when participants embodied an avatar whose skin tone did not match their own. Only 10 (17.5%) of the studies analyzed provided avatar personalization which included different skin tone options that participants could select. Some of the only studies (five out of 40) which utilized Black or dark-skinned avatars were doing so in the context of studying racial bias with all white participants. We argue that using light-skinned default avatars is not acceptable from a research ethics standpoint and that doing so serves to further maintain and normalize systemic racism. We provide recommendations for researchers with the goal of both mitigating and bringing awareness to current issues in VR research.