Abstract
The goal of the present review is to explain how immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can be used for the study of social interactions and how the use of virtual humans in immersive virtual environments can advance research and application in many different fields. Researchers studying individual differences in social interactions are typically interested in keeping the behavior and the appearance of the interaction partner constant across participants. With IVET researchers have full control over the interaction partners, can standardize them while still keeping the simulation realistic. Virtual simulations are valid: growing evidence shows that indeed studies conducted with IVET can replicate some well-known findings of social psychology. Moreover, IVET allows researchers to subtly manipulate characteristics of the environment (e.g., visual cues to prime participants) or of the social partner (e.g., his/her race) to investigate their influences on participants’ behavior and cognition. Furthermore, manipulations that would be difficult or impossible in real life (e.g., changing participants’ height) can be easily obtained with IVET. Beside the advantages for theoretical research, we explore the most recent training and clinical applications of IVET, its integration with other technologies (e.g., social sensing) and future challenges for researchers (e.g., making the communication between virtual humans and participants smoother).
Highlights
Virtual simulations are valid: growing evidence shows that studies conducted with immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can replicate some well-known findings of social psychology
We focus on social interactions with virtual on whom they are interacting with and this has an influence humans in the in virtual reality virtual environment (IVE) and their use for research and training. on participants’ behavior
As we illustrate in the present article, research on social interaction using IVET has established important results that were hard to achieve before its development
Summary
The methods high in ecological validity (e.g., social interactions with confederates) are low on standardization and. Using behavior are interested in investigating why one person behaves a virtual simulation of an interaction enables researchers to differently from another person – known as the study of replicate the studies, which is important especially for individual differences Such differences become hard to interpret those domains, such as social psychology, in which replication is if they are affected by what the social interaction partner lacking (Blascovich et al, 2002). One possibility is to include the interaction partner’s behavior Virtual Humans in IVEs as a control variable in the statistical analysis. Through different channels (e.g., verbal and non-verbal) and the Blascovich et al (2002) differentiates between human-avatars behavioral cues are often very subtle and hard to observe and (virtual humans controlled by humans) and agent-avatars
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
