Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape

By Xueni Pan, Antonia F. de C. Hamilton. British Journal of Psychology, 2018

631 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As virtual reality (VR) technology and systems become more commercially available and accessible, more and more psychologists are starting to integrate VR as part of their methods. This approach offers major advantages in experimental control, reproducibility, and ecological validity, but also has limitations and hidden pitfalls which may distract the novice user. This study aimed to guide the psychologist into the novel world of VR, reviewing available instrumentation and mapping the landscape of possible systems. We use examples of state‐of‐the‐art research to describe challenges which research is now solving, including embodiment, uncanny valley, simulation sickness, presence, ethics, and experimental design. Finally, we propose that the biggest challenge for the field would be to build a fully interactive virtual human who can pass a VR Turing test – and that this could only be achieved if psychologists, VR technologists, and AI researchers work together.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8635656465b4dc720c9d18dbaedb8b76c0266e67

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Social Psychology

In Human-Computer Interaction

Citations in the corpus

Immersion and the illusion of presence in virtual reality. (2018, background): “This timely article by Pan and Hamilton (2018) brings VR to the attention of a wide audience, and hopefully, the next 30 years will be even more productive than the last, given the widespread availability now of immersive systems.”