Dr Graham Phillips
Researchers here at Stanford University believe we'll soon be interacting with each other on the computer via avatars. These are digital representations of you and me in the virtual world. 

NARRATION
Already, there are computer games where players interact via avatars. 

Girl
Hey, guys. Welcome back. 

Girl 2
Hey, everybody. 

NARRATION
You can sit at home and meet your friends in virtual reality to chat, even gesture to each other. 

Steve Ballmer
Face recognition, body tracking, now even facial expressions... 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
Microsoft has released a product called Avatar Kinect, where you socialise with other avatars, but those avatars are mimicking your gestures and they're capturing your facial expressions. 

Steve Ballmer
Your smile. Your laugh. And even... the raise of your eyebrows. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
What it does is it takes this social networking, that we love so much with devices like Facebook, and puts an avatar layer on it, an avatar that moves like you do. 

Steve Ballmer
..all coming to your living room. 

NARRATION
And in the future, it won't be just living-room games. More and more of our interactions could be through avatars. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
For about an hour a day, kids are spending time inside of an avatar in the United States. To put that in perspective, they read print for about 38 minutes a day. So the avatar is becoming the medium of the future. 

NARRATION
That means the environment of the future will be virtual reality. What are the psychological consequences of spending more time in worlds like these than in actual reality? That's what this lab is dedicated to answering. Remarkably, they've found our brains are easily fooled when it comes to reality. 

Cody Karutz
So Graham, we're gonna have you walk the virtual pit. In order for you to do that, we're gonna need to track your ankles. So I have these two ankle sensors that I'll have you attach. Is that OK with you? 

Dr Graham Phillips
Sure. 

Cody Karutz
OK. 

NARRATION
The infrared sensors are tracked by eight cameras around the ceiling. So my feet are precisely followed for the virtual world. 

Dr Graham Phillips
So I've gotta walk the plank? 

Cody Karutz
So we're gonna have you walk the virtual plank. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Alright. I should try in real life. It looks pretty easy in real life. 

Cody Karutz
Yeah, there's no actual pit in this room so try to remind yourself. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Yeah, this is very easy to do. 

NARRATION
But then the weird part happened. The virtual reality goggles took me into a reality that wasn't that different. 

Dr Graham Phillips
In fact, it appears to be a room that's pretty much exactly the same as this room. 

Cody Karutz
Yes, so this is an exact rendering of this room that we built from the AutoCAD blueprints. 

NARRATION
And that was a key to the illusion I was about to experience because my brain had already accepted the actual room was real. 

Cody Karutz
Alright, next we're gonna open the floor. 

Dr Graham Phillips
It looks like the real room. 

Cody Karutz
And now we've changed something. So we've actually opened up the floor of the room to see a virtual pit. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Ah, you've got a dungeon here, I see. 

Cody Karutz
Correct. How do you feel? 

Dr Graham Phillips
Whoa. Uh, yeah, look, it's quite realistic actually. It does feel a little imposing. I've gotta walk across this plank. Oh! I don't know, what is that, a 20m drop either side? 

Cody Karutz
Correct, yeah. Now I'm gonna ask you to take a step off into the pit to see what happens, alright? 

Dr Graham Phillips
Whoa! I actually feel like this is a slightly scary thing to do. So take a step into the pit? 

Cody Karutz
Yeh, just remind yourself there's a physical room, right. So there's no actual pit there. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Oh, I'm down here now. Where are you all? Up there? 

Dr Robin Rosenberg
Your heart starts beating. You know intellectually that this is just the virtual world, that you're in a room, that you can't get hurt, but your body does not know that. Your brain is sending it all these signals, 'Do not cross the chasm on a plank. Be careful.' 

NARRATION
I was beamed into a classroom of students with very natural body movements, but who just stared at me. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Hello. Oh so when I, right, they track around with me. It's like some surreal sci-fi movie. 

NARRATION
That continual eye contact may be freaky, but it's the key, along with a virtual mirror back there... 

Dr Graham Phillips
I didn't even see you up the back. Hello. 

NARRATION
..to giving this world an extra level of reality. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
It is a powerful psychological experience and we say it's rooted in your back brain, meaning it's a response that, even when you know up front in your high level cognition areas, you know it's not real, your back brain wins this debate. 

NARRATION
But back to our question - how do these virtual worlds affect me? 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
One finding that is very inherent throughout over a decade of research on this is that things that happen in the virtual world are not free. So when you have a virtual experience, it can profoundly affect you outside of virtual reality, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. 

NARRATION
The bad effects of video games are well-studied. So Jeremy's lab decided to look at the possible good effects. Can human behaviour be changed for the better using avatars? 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
So if I build an avatar that looks just like you, and then show you your avatar getting healthy and your avatar losing weight as a function of exercise, when you leave the virtual world, that profound experience changes the way that way that you think about your own health and you'll actually behave more healthier. 

NARRATION
Rather than healthier, today I'm going to be taught to conserve energy by taking quicker showers. I watch my poor avatar eat coal, consuming an amount equivalent to the electricity used to heat my shower. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Yeah, that other Graham's not enjoying the task, I don't think. 

NARRATION
When people use this virtual shower, afterwards in the real world, they do tend to take shorter showers. In another study, people were given a superpower - the ability to fly and save a sick child. 

Dr Graham Phillips
This sounds like a job for Superman. 

NARRATION
After their heroic efforts in the virtual world, the volunteers were exposed to a faked-up calamity in the real world. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
When they leave virtual reality, there's a crisis, a woman out in the other room has a crisis, and we measure how thoroughly and how quickly they help that woman. 

NARRATION
Remarkably, spend even a short time in this world and you'll give that woman better assistance. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
Having a virtual experience where you fly like Superman and help save a child's life, that makes you more helpful in the real world. 

NARRATION
But one of the downsides of virtual reality is it can be a bit too real. Take this beautiful place. 

Cody Karutz
Just take a moment to look around. You can check out the fish. There's a shark there. 

Dr Graham Phillips
I was gonna say I saw a shark up there. 

Cody Karutz
See the shark as he circles around you. 

Dr Graham Phillips
I assume he won't give me a nip. 

Cody Karutz
Yeah, he's been programmed to be pretty nice. 

Dr Graham Phillips
Oh! Hey, the shark's just given me a whack. 

NARRATION
Now, I'm swimming with a shark. But in a previous study, kids swum with virtual whales. And the results were disturbing. 

Prof Jeremy Bailenson
A week later, we bring back those same children and we ask them, 'Hey, have you ever been to Sea World?' which is an amusement park in the United States, 'and swam around with whales?' 50 percent of our children formed false memories, meaning they thought the virtual experience was something that had actually happened to them in physical life. 

Dr Robin Rosenberg
We have something called 'source amnesia'. We may remember the content of something but we don't remember how we found out. 

NARRATION
But one of the biggest dangers of virtual reality is it will be so alluring. 

Dr Robin Rosenberg
You won't want to unplug, and so virtual life and internet life is so much more preferable to real life. because in real life, you have to negotiate with real people who may not say what you want and the rules aren't always so clear and it's a little unstructured. 

NARRATION
With virtual reality starting to hit living rooms now, we'll find out sooner rather than later where this technology will lead us.

STORY CONTACTS

Associate Professor Jeremy Bailenson 
Director, Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Stanford University

Dr Robin Rosenberg 
Clinical Psychologist, Stanford University