Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct. Recommendations for Good Scientific Practice and the Consumers of VR-Technology

The goal of this article is to present a first list of ethical concerns that may arise from research and personal use of virtual reality (VR) and related technology, and to offer concrete recommendations for minimizing those risks. Many of the recommendations call for focused research initiatives. In the first part of the article, we discuss the relevant evidence from psychology that motivates our concerns. In Section “Plasticity in the Human Mind,” we cover some of the main results suggesting that one’s environment can influence one’s psychological states, as well as recent work on inducing illusions of embodiment. Then, in Section “Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect,” we go on to discuss recent evidence indicating that immersion in VR can have psychological effects that last after leaving the virtual environment. In the second part of the article, we turn to the risks and recommendations. We begin, in Section “The Research Ethics of VR,” with the research ethics of VR, covering six main topics: the limits of experimental environments, informed consent, clinical risks, dual-use, online research, and a general point about the limitations of a code of conduct for research. Then, in Section “Risks for Individuals and Society,” we turn to the risks of VR for the general public, covering four main topics: long-term immersion, neglect of the social and physical environment, risky content, and privacy. We offer concrete recommendations for each of these 10 topics, summarized in Table 1

Virtual Reality and Empathy Enhancement: Ethical Aspects

The history of humankind is full of examples that indicate a constant desire to make human beings more moral. Nowadays, technological breakthroughs might have a significant impact on our moral character and abilities. This is the case of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. The aim of this paper is to consider the ethical aspects of the use of VR in enhancing empathy. First, we will offer an introduction to VR, explaining its fundamental features, devices and concepts. Then, we will approach the characterization of VR as an “empathy machine,” showing why this medium has aroused so much interest and why, nevertheless, we do not believe it is the ideal way to enhance empathy. As an alternative, we will consider fostering empathy-related abilities through virtual embodiment in avatars. In the conclusion, however, we will, we will examine some of the serious concerns related to the ethical relevance of empathy and will defend the philosophical case for a reason-guided empathy, also suggesting specific guidelines for possible future developments of empathy enhancement projects through VR embodied experiences

Inclusion in Virtual Reality Technology: A Scoping Review

Despite the significant growth in virtual reality applications and research, the notion of inclusion in virtual reality is not well studied. Inclusion refers to the active involvement of different groups of people in the adoption, use, design, and development of VR technology and applications. In this review, we provide a scoping analysis of existing virtual reality research literature about inclusion. We categorize the literature based on target group into ability, gender, and age, followed by those that study community-based design of VR experiences. In the latter group, we focus mainly on Indigenous Peoples as a clearer and more important example. We also briefly review the approaches to model and consider the role of users in technology adoption and design as a background for inclusion studies. We identify a series of generic barriers and research gaps and some specific ones for each group, resulting in suggested directions for future research

A Youthful Metaverse: Towards Designing Safe, Equitable, and Emotionally Fulfilling Social Virtual Reality Spaces for Younger Users

Social virtual reality (VR) represents the modern rendition of the metaverse, this dissertation aims to fill the research gaps while highlighting trends of youth in VR. The scientific contributions of this research include 1) expanding the current HCI understanding of the social dynamics and the interactions of teens in emerging novel online digital spaces; 2) bridging two research areas that have not been widely studied in HCI, social VR and young users in social VR; and 3) generating design implications to inform the design of future social VR platforms to better support and protect teens’ online social experiences, results which may also apply to other emerging online socio-technical spaces such as augmented reality (AR) social interactions. In summary, this work presents one of the first empirical investigations into youth, immersive technology, and broader metaverse

Virtual Body Ownership Illusions for Mental Health: A Narrative Review.

Over the last 20 years, virtual reality (VR) has been widely used to promote mental health in populations presenting different clinical conditions. Mental health does not refer only to the absence of psychiatric disorders but to the absence of a wide range of clinical conditions that influence people\u2019s general and social well-being such as chronic pain, neurological disorders that lead to motor o perceptual impairments, psychological disorders that alter behaviour and social cognition, or physical conditions like eating disorders or present in amputees. It is known that an accurate perception of oneself and of the surrounding environment are both key elements to enjoy mental health and well-being, and that both can be distorted in patients suffering from the clinical conditions mentioned above. In the past few years, multiple studies have shown the effectiveness of VR to modulate such perceptual distortions of oneself and of the surrounding environment through virtual body ownership illusions. This narrative review aims to review clinical studies that have explored the manipulation of embodied virtual bodies in VR for improving mental health, and to discuss the current state of the art and the challenges for future research in the context of clinical care

Actors, Avatars and Agents: Potentials and Implications of Natural Face Technology for the Creation of Realistic Visual Presence

We are on the cusp of creating realistic, interactive, fully rendered human faces on computers that transcend the “uncanny valley,” widely known for capturing the phenomenon of “eeriness” in faces that are almost, but not fully realistic. Because humans are hardwired to respond to faces in uniquely positive ways, artificial realistic faces hold great promise for advancing human interaction with machines. For example, realistic avatars will enable presentation of human actors in virtual collaboration settings with new levels of realism; artificial natural faces will allow the embodiment of cognitive agents, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, putting us on a path to create “artificial human” entities in the near future. In this conceptual paper, we introduce natural face technology (NFT) and its potential for creating realistic visual presence (RVP), a sensation of presence in interaction with a digital actor, as if present with another human. We contribute a forward-looking research agenda to information systems (IS) research, comprising terminology, early conceptual work, concrete ideas for research projects, and a broad range of research questions for engaging with this emerging, transformative technology as it becomes available for application. By doing so, we respond to calls for “blue ocean research” that explores unchartered territory and makes a novel technology accessible to IS early in its application. We outline promising areas of application and foreshadow philosophical, ethical, and conceptual questions for IS research pertaining to the more speculative phenomena of “living with artificial humans.