2025/05/13 by Michael Wiesing, Gemma Comadran, Mel Slater · 2 voices
Computer Science · #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #Augmented Reality Applications
paper · doi:10.1016/j.isci.2025.112655
Virtual reality's (VR) ability to create convincing illusions of presence makes it a powerful media for therapeutic and prosocial applications. Correspondingly, it also presents ethical challenges as the line between the real and virtual blurs, the focus of our study. Forty-nine participants interacted with a virtual experimenter that invited participants to sit on a chair, with 20% doing so without checking for a real chair. The virtual experimenter had also placed a tablet in a drawer, and a week later, in the corresponding real room, 45% of participants expected a tablet to be in the same place. Additionally, implicit attitudes were influenced based on subtle differences in wording of interview questions asked by the virtual experimenter. A Bayesian analysis supported these findings. Hence, participants may take virtual objects as real, risking their safety, or may inappropriately apply observations in VR to real-life problem solving, resulting in vulnerability to deception.