Understanding the Self Through the Use of Digitally Constructed Realities

Through interactive visual and auditory stimuli, digital technologies enable designers to create experiences that provoke response and engagement. Participants of a digital experience are uniquely distinguished by the differences in the decisions that they make. These decisions are made based upon their personal interpretation of the digitally synthesized experience. In the "real world," a person's personality is revealed by their response to an experience as interpreted by our conditioned worldview. While we may be born with genetic dispositions, conscious choices are made based upon the past experiences that make up our conditioned worldview. The mechanisms of experience, reaction, and conscious response are physiologically based and use the same underlying physiological processes (e.g., the endocrine system). Thus, the notion of one's self extended to virtual worlds is a projection of one's conditioned worldview onto the symbols within the virtual domain. By thoughtfully designing digitally constructed realities and observing players' responses, through the choices that they make and by measuring their biometric changes, one can infer their prior conditioning and worldview. This chapter provides a theoretic framework and research methodology for understanding self through the use of digitally constructed realities.