The Role of Avatar Appearance in Shaping EFL Learners’ Willingness to Communicate

Abstract

This study examined how avatar appearance influences Japanese EFL learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) and state communicative self-confidence, including anxiety and self-perceived communicative competence, drawing on the Proteus effect—the tendency for individuals to align their behaviors and attitudes with their avatars’ characteristics. Thirty-one Japanese university students participated in English communication tasks in VR using three avatar ethnicity conditions: baseline, Asian, and White. The baseline avatar was a neutral silhouette used for comparison. The Asian avatar was designed to represent a Japanese speaker, while the White avatar was intended to reflect a commonly idealized image of a native English speaker based on representations found in language education contexts. Results showed that avatar appearance did not significantly affect WTC or self-perceived communicative competence. However, participants reported significantly lower state anxiety and higher state communicative self-confidence when embodying the White avatar compared to the baseline condition. Linear mixed-effects analyses further indicated that communicative outcomes were largely influenced by stable individual differences, while embodiment components were differentially associated with anxiety and learners’ self-confidence and perceived competence depending on avatar condition. These findings highlight conditional avatar influences on EFL learners’ affective experiences and communicative self-evaluations in immersive VR contexts.