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

Playing With Embodied Social Interaction : A Thematic Review of Experiments on Social Aspects in Gameful Virtual Reality

Revision Published: 11 May 2022Recently, there has been a burgeoning of immersive virtual reality (VR) applications in a variety of shapes, including gameful social VR. Despite a longstanding tradition of studying social factors in gameful computing, this perspective in the specific experiences of VR is only gaining traction. This highly multidisciplinary area of interest is immensely complex with potential consequences on individuals and social groups alike. To aid in constituting and systematizing this area of research from the early days, this paper explores 14 state-of-art publications on experimental research of social aspects in gameful VR. These were analysed predominantly based on the included manipulations and the studied outcomes resulting in the extraction of five and seven thematic wholes, respectively. Finally, based on the findings, four broad avenues to consider were emphasized as suggested paths for a comprehensive future of embodied gameful social VR application and research across a variety of disciplines.Peer reviewe

The Feeling of Control: The Psychology Behind Immersive Controls in Video Games and Their Real World Effects

There is a phenomenon that can occur while playing video games where the player begins to feel similar sensations to the player character. This phenomenon, unnamed until now, has very little research directly related to it. There is plenty of indirect research that can be applied to this phenomenon, now called sensation mirroring. A review of both cognitive and psychobiological literature allows for major connections between human functions and how they interact with video game control schemes to be drawn. These connections help form a potential theory on the mechanisms of sensation mirroring and provide directions for future research on the topic

Bodily resonance: Exploring the effects of virtual embodiment on pain modulation and the fostering of empathy toward pain sufferers

Globally, around 20% of people suffer from chronic pain, an illness that cannot be cured and has been linked to numerous physical and mental conditions. According to the BioPsychoSocial model of pain, chronic pain presents patients with biological, psychological, and social challenges and difficulties. Immersive virtual reality (VR) has shown great promise in helping people manage acute and chronic pain, and facilitating empathy of vulnerable populations. Therefore, the first research trajectory of this dissertation targets chronic pain patients’ biological and psychological sufferings to provide VR analgesia, and the second research trajectory targets healthy people to build empathy and reduce patients’ social stigma. Researchers have taken the attention distraction approach to study how acute pain patients can manage their condition in VR, while the virtual embodiment approach has mostly been studied with healthy people exposed to pain stimulus. My first research trajectory aimed to understand how embodied characteristics affect users’ sense of embodiment and pain. Three studies have been carried out with healthy people under heat pain, complex regional pain syndrome patients, and phantom limb pain patients. My findings indicate that for all three studies, when users see a healthy or intact virtual body or body parts, they experience significant reductions in their self-reported pain ratings. Additionally, I found that the appearance of a virtual body has a significant impact on pain, whereas the virtual body’s motions do not. Despite the prevalence of chronic pain, public awareness of it is remarkably low, and pain patients commonly experience social stigma. Thus, having an embodied perspective of chronic pain patients is critical to understand their social stigma. Although there is a growing interest in using embodied VR to foster empathy towards gender or racial bias, few studies have focused on people with chronic pain. My second trajectory explored how researchers can foster empathy towards pain patients in embodied VR. To conclude, this dissertation uncovers the role of VR embodiment and dissects embodied characteristics in pain modulation and empathy generation. Finally, I summarized a novel conceptual design framework for embodied VR applications with design recommendations and future research directions

Towards a Framework for Embodying Any-Body through Sensory Translation and Proprioceptive Remapping: A Pilot Study

We address the problem of physical avatar embodiment and investi- gate the most general factors that may allow a person to “wear” an- other body, different from her own. A general approach is required to exploit the fact that an avatar can have any kind of body. With this pilot study we introduce a conceptual framework for the design of non-anthropomorphic embodiment, to foster immersion and user engagement. The person is interfaced with the avatar, a robot, through a system that induces a divergent internal sensorimotor mapping while controlling the avatar, to create an immersive expe- rience. Together with the conceptual framework, we present two implementations: a prototype tested in the lab and an interactive in- stallation exhibited to general public. These implementations consist of a wheeled robot, and control and sensory feedback systems. The control system includes mechanisms that both detect and resist the user’s movement, increasing the sense of connection with the avatar; the feedback system is a virtual reality (VR) environment represent- ing the avatar’s unique perception, combining sensor and control in- formation to generate visual cues. Data gathered from users indicate that the systems implemented following the proposed framework create a challenging and engaging experience, thus providing solid ground for further developments

VR Storytelling

The question of cinematic VR production has been on the table for several years. This is due to the peculiarity of VR language which, even if it is de ned by an image that surrounds and immerses the viewer rather than placing them, as in the classic cinematic situation, in front of a screen, relies decisively on an audiovisual basis that cannot help but refer to cinematic practices of constructing visual and auditory experience. Despite this, it would be extremely reductive to consider VR as the mere transposition of elements of cinematic language. The VR medium is endowed with its own speci city, which inevitably impacts its forms of narration. We thus need to investigate the narrative forms it uses that are probably related to cinematic language, and draw their strength from the same basis, drink from the same well, but develop according to di erent trajectories, thus displaying di erent links and a nities