Social motivation in immersive environments

Abstract

Immersive virtual environment technology can greatly aid our understanding of social influence, social interaction and other areas of research in social psychology. This technology allows researchers to test theoretically-based hypotheses and maintain complete control over a variety of factors in social situations, from the physical appearance of the virtual world to the behavior of virtual others in the world. This degree of experimental control is not accompanied by the usual decrease in the realism of experimental settings that are associated with traditional research methods. By allowing researchers to increase the realism of social situations, this technology also promises to enhance the generalizability of results obtained in experiments to the natural world. Furthermore, virtual environments can also be used to implement "impossible" experimental manipulations such as changing the physical (i.e., skin color) and social (i.e., gender) identity of research participants. Finally, what we learn about social interaction by using this technology may be leveraged to enhance the realism and utility of immersive environment technology.