Virtual Reality as a Communication Environment: Consensual Hallucination, Fiction, and Possible Selves

Abstract

This article addresses a matter of potentially great social significance-Virtual Reality (VR) as a communication environment-from the point of view of social psychology. While it is easily recognized that technological research is deeply involved in the ongoing development of VR systems, there is no equal agreement about behavioral sciences having good reasons for both interest and concern in VR as medium. This paper reviews current research on the quality of VR experience and integrates it in a theoretical framework centered on self identity processes. The main issues are: which sense may be ascribed to the "consensual hallucination" experienced in VR? Which sort of fiction is peculiar to VR? Which influence can VR as a medium have on the construction of the self? We cannot reject in principle the idea that VR could, when fully developed, create alternative realities almost paralleling, in sensory richness, "conventional" realities. The "cyber" view, stressing the capability of VR to supply alternative, disembodied forms of community, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant: technologies nurture specific political, ideological, and also mystical beliefs as essential aspects of their moral foundation (and vice versa, ideologies can inspire specific technological projects).