The Transformational Power of Virtual Worlds

Why are virtual worlds important to business, education, health and society?
Isn’t virtual reality just a hype?
What needs and problems can virtual worlds address and how?

According to Stanford Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founder of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), right now we’re in a paradigm-shifting time in virtual reality. In the above video Bailenson explains the proven effects of avatars experiences on people, brain, psychology and society based on lab experiments and research. Powerful implications for education, marketing, sales, health, non-profits, politics. Ground-breaking and sometimes scary research that questions strongly the rationality of our decisions and behavior:

Increase the students’ attention in synchronous elearning sessions in virtual immersive environments
Teach complex physical skills & movements in virtual worlds with body controlled avatars occupying the same space
Use avatar mimicry to convince people and increase your chances of being hired
Face similarity increases attractiveness, persuasion, buys and trust.
Use your avatar to change yourself (virtual mirror or Proteus effect): your physical behavior is influenced and changes depending on your avatar’s appearance.
Slight avatar attractiveness variation boosts our confidence, social skills & interaction with others!
Subtle avatar height variation influences our negotiation capabilities both in the virtual and physical world.
Experiencing your avatar work out in the virtual world causes you to exercise more in the physical world.
Feature yourself as spokesperson or model in a virtual advertisement and you’re going to prefer this product even after you’ve forgotten that link
When young people experience as avatar their future self in 65, they are more likely to increase bank savings.
Get people experience disabilities as avatars to make them sensitive and volunteers in that field.
When people experience the grave consequences of our habits to the environment, your unconscious behavior take this into account.

In several of these experiments people were exposed comparatively to passive media such as text, voice, video. The virtual reality experience as avatar beats them and is the only technology that demonstrates this powerful capability of influencing people’s behavior.

These points are covered in depth in the book Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life and New Worlds by Blascovich and Bailenson.