What is Self-Presence

There is currently a need for a standardized concept that describes how relationships between the self and virtual self-representations operate across virtual contexts. The framework of self-presence fulfills this need by describing how people connect to their virtual self-representations on three distinct levels of self (body, emotion, identity). The present chapter draws from the fields of presence and neuroscience to explicate this conceptual framework and describe its operationalization, the Self-Presence Questionnaire. This explication and questionnaire were developed throughout a line of research that examined self-presence within numerous virtual contexts. The results from these studies suggest that the concept of self-presence is reliable and valid, and that future research could utilize the concept to develop a greater understanding of avatar use. This chapter concludes by suggesting such research applications of self-presence and then discussing the larger implications of this line of research.