We have been investigating the impact of anonymity provided by avatars on emotional communication and self-disclosure. In a recent study done at the Institute for Creative Technology, University of Southern California (Kang, Watt,& Gratch, 2009), researchers found that increasing the levels of anonymity from none (full visual identification), to intermediate (a graphical avatar), to full (providing no visual representation at all), had two opposing effects: it decreased the sense of emotional connection while at the same time increasing the amount of self-disclosure of intimate information that an individual was willing to share.
