ИСТИНА

It has been shown that the rules of social interactions between human and avatars in virtual environments are similar to interactions in the real world (Yee et al., 2007). Our aim was to study participant’s proхemic behavior during the social interaction with avatars of different ethnic appearance. We constructed three virtual scenes. In each scene a group of avatars of the same ethnic appearance stood in the center of a living room. The virtual scenes were presented using the CAVE virtual reality system. The participants were asked to go around each avatar and remember all the details of its appearance. During the execution participant’s body movements were recorded. Then participants answered the questions about the details of avatar’s appearance and filled out questionnaires assessing their presence effect (IPQ) and ethnic attitudes (IAT). The results showed the shorter interpersonal distances with avatars of the same ethnic appearance. It was also revealed that questionnaire’s scores were in good agreement with behavioral characteristics while performing the memory task. The study was funded by Russian Scientific Fund project № 15-18-00109.