Behavior in Virtual Environments and Physical Ones (07-12-10)

Virtual environments have become extremely realistic, which has its pluses and minuses.  Experimenters have fundamentally recreated Milgram’s famous obedience experiments in a virtual environment.  Unfortunately, their findings replicated those of the original studies.  On the positive note, these results support the use of virtual environments to gauge response to real and hypothetical environments.

Michael Dambru and Elise Vatine.  2010.  “Reopening the Study of Extreme Social Behaviors:  Obedience to Authority Within an Immersive Video Environment.”  European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 760-773.