Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Azu just graduated from university and went through a lot of hardships to join a law firm. He tried his best to have a big fight. As a result, the first task he received when he started work was to change his avatar.

This is not the first time he has been asked to change his avatar: when he was young, he was criticized by his parents that "the avatar is not sunny enough." when he was a student, he was said by his mentor that "the avatar looks very idle." unexpectedly, he would be said to be "unprofessional" after work. Ah Zu felt that he had been sentenced to life in prison by the avatar police.

Azu, who is shivering in the working group, just doesn't want to become a member of Lianliankan. What's wrong with him?

Avatar, not only used for self-expression, is not only a way of self-expression, but also an important business card for people in the online world. It is really not good to think about making avatars cater to their preferences.

Common avatar types | adapted from Do Facebook profile pictures reflect user's personality? The "pseudo-drama theory" put forward by sociologist Owen Goffman interprets society and life as a big stage. People are actors on the stage and will present their roles under the attention of the audience according to certain requirements.

The Internet extends the stage of the performance from offline to online, and the avatar is bound to personal identity, so it has become a part of the performance.

Leaders, colleagues and clients sat off the stage with the script "Azu is a lawyer", but in the first act of the performance, Azu appeared in a sand sculpture image, a sense of disobedience that easily made the audience feel that the actor was unprofessional.

"stop it, Azu, there are avatar policemen outside." when setting up avatars, people not only need to satisfy themselves, but also consider the feelings of the audience, and need to strike a balance between pleasing the audience and expressing themselves.

This balance will tilt when using different App: on platforms such as Weibo, Douban and bilibili, there are fewer kinship / karma / academic / geographical relationships, people have a greater need to meet their own interests, and they will express themselves more brazenly when setting up their avatars, without paying too much attention to the reaction of the audience.

Furry will use their own animal settings as avatars | on dating App such as Bilibili@ Silver carbon Gintan Momo Exploration, the audience is a potential date, so users are more likely to choose avatars that highlight their sexual attractiveness.

On professional websites such as LinkedIn, the audience to meet is potential employers and other professionals, the need to express their personality is often suppressed, and users will use avatars that show professionalism and ability.

Among the many App, Wechat has the most complex attribute, and the composition of "audience" is very diverse. There are also "important audiences" such as elders and leaders. It can be both Weibo, Momo and LinkedIn, which makes simple "self-expression" seem out of place on Wechat.

When Wechat avatars are associated with "work", people need to adjust their performance in the workplace to move closer to the direction of professionals.

How would professionals choose avatars? When people look for professional help in reality, in addition to screening hard conditions (such as job qualifications, past experience, success stories, etc.), they will also be affected by each other's appearance, dressing style, speech and other factors.

Similarly, in the online environment, the connection between avatar and personal image is an important part of impression management. Professional professionals also have some tacit rules when setting up their avatars.

First of all, when setting up avatars, employees usually consider social norms, corporate culture and popular advice, with their own industry characteristics. For example, the Wall Street Bronze Bull below symbolizes the expectations of the stock market for a bull market. Used to be a hot avatar in the financial industry.

The typical avatar of the financial industry has formed a stereotype of many industries and reached a consensus on the image of many professionals, so the templated avatar is more in line with public expectations and shortens the familiarity process. it can make the other party accept your professional role more quickly and improve the efficiency of communication.

Secondly, there are differences in the types of avatars in different positions.

Generally speaking, work in the workplace can be divided into two categories: one is task-oriented, such as IT engineers, who focus on tasks, focusing on things and data; the other is relationship-oriented, such as salespeople, focusing on interpersonal relationships.

Agents are task-oriented, highlighting seriousness, calmness and wisdom. Research shows that after controlling gender differences, relationship-oriented professionals choose more emotional pictures as avatars than task-oriented professionals. these pictures emphasize smiles and eye contact, often with features such as slightly tilted heads.

According to previous research, the following settings can also make a person's profile portrait look more professional:

Character presentation ratio: it is best to cut from the shoulder so that the face can account for about 60% of the image

Business suit: a decent business suit can increase the judgment of ability and influence

Smile degree: while increasing affinity, it reduces the perception of ability, so relationship-oriented work can smile more, while task-oriented work can be more serious.

Wearing glasses: related to higher intelligence, ability and professional status, but less persuasive and less attractive

Does mysterious smile + glasses + prominent face + business suit make you feel professional? As seen and seen, choosing templated avatars can also minimize the difficulties of bystanders in decoding avatars and avoid misunderstandings.

Stuart Hall, known as the "father of cultural studies", put forward the theory of encoding and decoding of information in 1973, which can be used to explain the process of information transmission in avatars:

Stuart Hall, how would you feel if this was someone's avatar? The avatar first goes through the selective and purposeful information processing of the user, that is, encoding; then the avatar is seen by the receiver and interpreted according to specific rules from its own point of view, that is, decoding.

However, there is not necessarily a "direct identity" between encoding and decoding, and it can even be said that without a correct decoder, decoding is bound to be "distorted" and "distorted".

For young people, the decoder can be animation, games, "circle culture" in the two-dimensional field, and so on. The decoding of this kind of avatar requires the receiver to understand or even be familiar with the corresponding cultural knowledge, while parents and elders lack understanding. it's natural to misread young people's avatars.

For those elders who are familiar with the character of young people, they are likely to use the power of the elderly to replace those avatars that are easy to cause "impression conflict" and to maintain a consistent image both online and offline. And the avatar should also show "sunshine", "decent" and other characteristics as much as possible.

NBA star Curry's NFT avatar worth 1.2 million yuan, from which young people can interpret "Curry is very rich and trendy", old people. After all, if others misunderstand the meaning of your profile picture and leave the wrong "online first impression", you may miss out on potential opportunities.

As early as 1976, the French philosopher Guy Debord mentioned in his classic The Society of the Spectacle: "there is no doubt that our times... prefer images to physical objects, prefer reproduction to originals, prefer performance to reality, and prefer appearance to existence."

People are so immersed in the performance of images that they "judge people by their appearance" when they see their avatars.

When people see a picture of a real-life avatar, they will initially judge the person's reliability, dominance and attractiveness.

In addition, people use avatars to judge each other's friendliness, emotional stability, anxiety, personality traits, and even intelligence.

Host Zhang Da once used an all-black avatar to interpret the emotional state of the avatar users at that time. When we have not yet made a deep acquaintance with others, the preliminary judgment of the avatar will influence us to make some important decisions, such as affecting the turnover of real business.

In Airbnb (a residential rental software), the seller's avatar usually appears with the house he provides. The facial expressions in the seller's avatar have a direct impact on whether consumers rent the house, according to a study.

In dating App, the role of the avatar is even more obvious, it will directly determine whether the other person is willing to send you a first date invitation.

In addition, the number of votes that election candidates can get, the economic benefits generated by the company during the tenure of CEO, and the employer's preference for resumes will all be affected by the profile impression.

Which picture of Ah Zu makes you feel more capable of working? More attractive? More credible? Man is born free, but he is always in chains.

In industries such as lawyers, counselors, intermediaries and sales that need to quickly build trust with strangers, we have to sacrifice the freedom of avatar expression to gain the trust of our clients. This is a process of "I have become stronger, but also surrender some of my freedom".

Pajamas can't be worn in the company, but they can be worn casually at home. Lawyers use serious portraits on Wechat. Who knows if cute Hello Kitty will be used as a profile photo on private life accounts?

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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fruit Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: general Hei, Editor: Emeria, Youyou

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