Project title
Psychology and Ethics Of Progressively Lifelike Embodiments in the Metaverse (PEOPLE in the Metaverse)
Project description
Virtual reality and augmented reality, known together as eXtended Reality (XR), are now widely used at home, work, and school, offering immersive experiences. When combined with artificial intelligence (AI), XR creates realistic and personalized interactions. Avatars and environments become so lifelike that they are indistinguishable from real ones, making virtual experiences feel genuine and impactful on our real-world behaviors and attitudes.
XR also allows for deep personalisation through extensive tracking of user behavior, providing AI with detailed data for psychological profiling. Companies like Meta see XR as a powerful marketing tool, using this data to create persuasive and tailored experiences. For example, during a virtual political rally, your non-verbal cues could be analyzed to influence your emotions and preferences through techniques like increasing eye contact or mirroring your behavior.
Wijnand IJsselsteijn wants to unpack and analyse the psychological effects and ethical values at stake, and explore a number of innovative ways forward, including methods of psychological inoculation and digital health, ethical foresight analysis, and design interventions towards reflection-oriented user experiences.
Selected publications
- Affective and Cognitive Reactions to Robot-Initiated Social Control of Health Behaviors
Xu, J., Zhang, C., Cuijpers, R. H. & IJsselsteijn, W. A., 11 Mar 2024, HRI ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, p. 810–819 10 p. - A Sequential Sampling Approach to the Integration of Habits and Goals
Zhang, C., van Wissen, A., Dotsch, R., Lakens, D. & IJsselsteijn, W. A., 5 Mar 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Computational Brain and Behavior. XX, X - Benefits of Human-AI Interaction for Expert Users Interacting with Prediction Models: a Study on Marathon Running
Muijlwijk, H., Willemsen, M. C., Smyth, B. & IJsselsteijn, W. A., 5 Apr 2024, IUI ’24: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, p. 245–258 14 p.