New virtual reality research – and a new lab – at Stanford

Cutting down a virtual redwood with a virtual chainsaw may lead you to save trees by recycling more paper. That finding is an example of how real-world behavior can be changed by immersing people in virtual reality environments - a notion that is at the heart of work under way in Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. BY ADAM GORLICK If a tree falls in a virtual reality forest, will anyone hear an environmental message? They will, as long as they were the ones who cut down the make-believe redwood. New findings from Stanford researchers show that people who were immersed in a three-dimensional virtual forest and told to saw through a towering sequoia until it crashed in front of them later used less paper in the real world than people who only imagined what it's like to cut down a tree. "We found that virtual reality can change how people behave," said Sun Joo Ahn , whose doctoral dissertation outlines the findings. "That's the big result. When people are in virtual reality and going through the motions of actually cutting down this tree, it might make them feel more personally accountable or responsible for the damage that occurred." Ahn's work is among the latest batch of studies to come from Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab.