Yaremych Haley E, Persky Susan
Social & Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health.
J Exp Soc Psychol. 2019 Nov;85. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103845. Epub 2019 Jul 19.
Virtual reality (VR) offers unique benefits to social psychological research, including a high degree of experimental control alongside strong ecological validity, a capacity to manipulate any variable of interest, and an ability to trace the physical, nonverbal behavior of the user in a very fine-grained and automated manner. VR improves upon traditional behavioral measurement techniques (e.g., observation and coding) on several fronts as data collection is covert, continuous, passive, and occurs within a controlled context. The current review synthesizes extant methods for tracing physical behavior in VR, such as gaze tracking and interpersonal distance measurement, and describes how researchers have applied these methods to understand important phenomena within the context of social psychology. To date, primary areas of application have included the assessment of social approach and avoidance, social evaluation and bias, and engagement. The limitations of behavioral tracing methods in VR, as well as future directions for their continued application and extension, are discussed. This narrative review equips readers with a thorough understanding of behavioral tracing methods that can be implemented in VR, their benefits and drawbacks, the insight they may offer into social processes, and future avenues of work for applying emergent technologies to research questions in social psychology.
虚拟现实（VR）为社会心理学研究带来了独特的优势，包括高度的实验控制以及较强的生态效度、能够操纵任何感兴趣的变量，并且能够以非常精细和自动化的方式追踪用户的身体、非语言行为。在几个方面，VR改进了传统的行为测量技术（如观察和编码），因为数据收集是隐蔽、连续、被动的，并且发生在可控的环境中。本综述综合了目前在VR中追踪身体行为的方法，如注视追踪和人际距离测量，并描述了研究人员如何应用这些方法来理解社会心理学背景下的重要现象。迄今为止，主要应用领域包括社会趋近和回避的评估、社会评价和偏见以及参与度。文中还讨论了VR中行为追踪方法的局限性，以及它们持续应用和扩展的未来方向。这篇叙述性综述使读者全面了解可在VR中实施的行为追踪方法、其优缺点、它们对社会过程可能提供的见解，以及将新兴技术应用于社会心理学研究问题的未来工作方向。
