Neuroscience
… and sofas you could hose down! It’s always entertaining to consider our future thinking of yesteryear with 20:20 hindsight. So as we await our ‘guest hosts’ who are going to usher in our own new era, we thought we would peer back into the archives of the Digest and The Psychologist to see how our consideration of technological advances has stood the test of time.
Bypassing articles with quaint titles such as 'The internet: A possible research tool?', our focus is virtual reality (VR), in the days after Facebook spent $2 billion on the technology.
Winding the clock back to 1999, we find this piece from The Psychologist claiming that although VR had been described as ‘a solution looking for a problem’, there were in fact several important research questions in psychology that it was poised to answer. And does indeed seem that it is in the field of research where virtual reality has proven most prolific, with everything from replications of Milgram’s famous study to providing Digested gems such as ‘athletes more skilled at crossing the road than non-athletes’. Immersive virtual environments were also used in a (failed) attempt to reduce racial bias.
But a decade later, it could be argued that the early promise of virtual reality had faded and the focus was on online ‘virtual worlds’ rather than necessarily going for the fully immersive experience. We considered the issue in both The Psychologist and the Digest. ‘If you remain undaunted,’ Christian Jarrett wrote in 'Get a Second Life', ‘[psychologist Simon] Bignell says the first place to start is to download the free SL software from the internet. “Get yourself an avatar, customise it and then just take the plunge.”’ But did many psychologists heed that advice? Despite marking its 10th anniversary last June, Second Life has seen a considerable drop in its user-base and workforce in recent years. Perhaps such environments will remain a very distant second best.
At the risk of falling into the ‘Alan Sugar iPod’ trap, I would like to make a prediction of my own: that 3D television will prove to be a passing fad. I’m not convinced the predictions in our 2001 article on immersive television have really been borne out, and there is research to suggest that 3D films are neither more enjoyable nor more psychologically arousing than their 2D equivalents. Life happens in 3D anyway, and perhaps most people manage to immerse themselves in the experience psychologically just fine without the help of expensive and cumbersome technology. Now those sofas would be much more useful…
_________________________________
Post written by Dr Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist, for the BPS Research Digest. Our 'guest hosts' begin posting next week.
- A New Morning
So it's the morning after the night before, when I raised a glass to my departing friend and colleague Dr Christian Jarrett. As Editor of the Research Digest and Journalist on The Psychologist, Christian has given more than a decade of exemplary service...
- Pathological Computer Use Is A Real Problem, A Psychiatrist Argues
Standpoint magazine, the new right-wing intellectual monthly published by the Social Affairs Unit, has a thoughtful, if tendentious, essay on pathological computer use. Psychiatrist Jerald Block believes more should be done to recognise "pathological...
- Psychological Research In Virtual Worlds
Nick Yee of Stanford University, with the fourth article in our series of guest features. Virtual worlds (such as World of Warcraft and Second Life) have received a great deal of media and academic attention recently. While these virtual communities provide...
- Classic 1960's Obediency Experiment Reproduced In Virtual Reality
Scientists have recreated Milgram’s classic obediency psychology experiment using virtual reality. Back in the 1960s Stanley Milgram appeared to show that student participants would obey a researcher and administer lethal electric shocks to a stranger,...
- Mimicry The Best Form Of Flattery For Computers Too
After a social interaction, participants rate people who mimicked their movements or speech more favourably than they rate people who didn’t mimic them, even if they were unaware of the mimicry – a phenomenon that’s been dubbed the chameleon effect....
Neuroscience
We were promised jetpacks! …
… and sofas you could hose down! It’s always entertaining to consider our future thinking of yesteryear with 20:20 hindsight. So as we await our ‘guest hosts’ who are going to usher in our own new era, we thought we would peer back into the archives of the Digest and The Psychologist to see how our consideration of technological advances has stood the test of time.
Bypassing articles with quaint titles such as 'The internet: A possible research tool?', our focus is virtual reality (VR), in the days after Facebook spent $2 billion on the technology.
Winding the clock back to 1999, we find this piece from The Psychologist claiming that although VR had been described as ‘a solution looking for a problem’, there were in fact several important research questions in psychology that it was poised to answer. And does indeed seem that it is in the field of research where virtual reality has proven most prolific, with everything from replications of Milgram’s famous study to providing Digested gems such as ‘athletes more skilled at crossing the road than non-athletes’. Immersive virtual environments were also used in a (failed) attempt to reduce racial bias.
But a decade later, it could be argued that the early promise of virtual reality had faded and the focus was on online ‘virtual worlds’ rather than necessarily going for the fully immersive experience. We considered the issue in both The Psychologist and the Digest. ‘If you remain undaunted,’ Christian Jarrett wrote in 'Get a Second Life', ‘[psychologist Simon] Bignell says the first place to start is to download the free SL software from the internet. “Get yourself an avatar, customise it and then just take the plunge.”’ But did many psychologists heed that advice? Despite marking its 10th anniversary last June, Second Life has seen a considerable drop in its user-base and workforce in recent years. Perhaps such environments will remain a very distant second best.
At the risk of falling into the ‘Alan Sugar iPod’ trap, I would like to make a prediction of my own: that 3D television will prove to be a passing fad. I’m not convinced the predictions in our 2001 article on immersive television have really been borne out, and there is research to suggest that 3D films are neither more enjoyable nor more psychologically arousing than their 2D equivalents. Life happens in 3D anyway, and perhaps most people manage to immerse themselves in the experience psychologically just fine without the help of expensive and cumbersome technology. Now those sofas would be much more useful…
_________________________________
Post written by Dr Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist, for the BPS Research Digest. Our 'guest hosts' begin posting next week.
- A New Morning
So it's the morning after the night before, when I raised a glass to my departing friend and colleague Dr Christian Jarrett. As Editor of the Research Digest and Journalist on The Psychologist, Christian has given more than a decade of exemplary service...
- Pathological Computer Use Is A Real Problem, A Psychiatrist Argues
Standpoint magazine, the new right-wing intellectual monthly published by the Social Affairs Unit, has a thoughtful, if tendentious, essay on pathological computer use. Psychiatrist Jerald Block believes more should be done to recognise "pathological...
- Psychological Research In Virtual Worlds
Nick Yee of Stanford University, with the fourth article in our series of guest features. Virtual worlds (such as World of Warcraft and Second Life) have received a great deal of media and academic attention recently. While these virtual communities provide...
- Classic 1960's Obediency Experiment Reproduced In Virtual Reality
Scientists have recreated Milgram’s classic obediency psychology experiment using virtual reality. Back in the 1960s Stanley Milgram appeared to show that student participants would obey a researcher and administer lethal electric shocks to a stranger,...
- Mimicry The Best Form Of Flattery For Computers Too
After a social interaction, participants rate people who mimicked their movements or speech more favourably than they rate people who didn’t mimic them, even if they were unaware of the mimicry – a phenomenon that’s been dubbed the chameleon effect....