ArticleBritish journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)2018
Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape.
Article in British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 125 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
125 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Effects of virtual reality rehabilitation training on gait and balance in patients with Parkinson's disease: A systematic review.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- A Walk in the Park? Examining the Impact of App-Based Weather Warnings on Affective Reactions and the Search for Information in a Virtual City.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Trial
- VRrec: A zero-coding open-source VR body-motion capture tool for behavioral research.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Towards naturalistic social neuroscience: A multi-level framework integrating real-world phenotyping, neurobiology, and computational mechanisms.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Therapist-guided virtual reality exposure therapy for fear of heights: evidence from a multiple-baseline single-case experimental design.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A multimodal dataset for emotional transition analysis in virtual reality.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Designing for Comfort in VR Public Speaking: How Avatar Realism and Natural Environments Shape User Experience and Stress Responses.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Making Machine Learning Accessible for Developmental Science: The Case of Automated Face Detection.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Automated Inference of Social Anxiety From Behavior in Social Virtual Reality: Cross-Sectional Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Observational
- Anticipation and prevention of real risks of virtual environments in psychiatry.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Review
- Virtual agents as a scalable tool for diverse, robust gesture recognition.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Strengthening social belonging through VR-Based Group dance: a controlled trial with community-dwelling older women.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Reducing aggressive behavior in forensic inpatients with virtual reality aggression prevention training-intellectual disability: a pilot study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Spatial Studies in Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality: Potentials, Challenges, and Requirements.KN - journal of cartography and geographic information · 2026Review
- Development of an ecological, immersive approach to socio-moral reasoning assessment in virtual reality.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- When the City Speaks: How Urban Form Shapes the Cultural Transmission of Spatial Conceptualization.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Avatars versus the people: Photo-realism, spontaneous detection and trait inferences of digitised faces.Perception · 2026Article
- Social interaction shapes and boosts second language learning: virtual reality can show us how.NPJ science of learning · 2025Review
- An Affordances-Based Approach and Scoping Review of Virtual Reality Applications in Forensic Behavioral and Mental Health Assessment and Treatment.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
65 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As virtual reality (VR) technology and systems become more commercially available and accessible, more and more psychologists are starting to integrate VR as part of their methods. This approach offers major advantages in experimental control, reproducibility, and ecological validity, but also has limitations and hidden pitfalls which may distract the novice user. This study aimed to guide the psychologist into the novel world of VR, reviewing available instrumentation and mapping the landscape of possible systems. We use examples of state-of-the-art research to describe challenges which research is now solving, including embodiment, uncanny valley, simulation sickness, presence, ethics, and experimental design. Finally, we propose that the biggest challenge for the field would be to build a fully interactive virtual human who can pass a VR Turing test - and that this could only be achieved if psychologists, VR technologists, and AI researchers work together.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.