Experiments in Virtual Reality

Found my way to a talk at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard on Monday by Jeremy Bailenson. Bailenson runs the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford and they explore the implications of human interactions through avatars, among other things.

Bailenson was talking about avatars, a hot topic right now, for sure. His basic point was that avatar behavior influences human behavior in real life in a variety of ways. He presented a broad range of studies from VHIL which explore various aspects of this influence. For example a person inhabiting a more attractive avatar in virtual space behaves more confidently in a virtual social situation and is more likely to prevail in a negotiation. But that behavior then carries over to "first life" behaviors.

For example, people who inhabited an avatar that appeared to slim down as it was exercising reported on average 30 minutes more time spent exercising in the 24 hours following the experiment. Crazy stuff, with possible deep implications for educating kids. Check out all the VHIL projects here.