Episode #218: Virtual Reality with Jeremy Bailenson

Jeremy Bailenson is founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and a Faculty Leader at Stanford’s Center for Longevity. He earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University.

Bailenson studies the psychology of Virtual Reality (VR) and has been in the space of VR since 1999, in particular he studies how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. His lab builds and studies systems that allow people to meet in virtual space, and explores the changes in the nature of social interaction. His most recent research focuses on how VR can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health.

He’s just penned his second book, Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, which forms the basis for our conversation.

Expect to learn a number of things in this show, including:

• What some of the applications for virtual reality are, including how it might be used to quell biases and reshape a person’s worldview
• What some of the risks and potential downsides might be and as such, what virtual reality companies need to be thinking about
• How far away we are from mainstream adoption

Topics discussed:

• Superbowl Sunday
• How VR can be used to hone our imagination, make us more empathic, improve our performance, improve learning and recover from trauma
• Different applications for VR
• Potential risks and downsides
• Why VR is not an ‘either or’ proposition
• How VR can help us better understand biases to help with creative work
• Challenges to mainstream adoption and parallels to the past
• How Jeremy is using VR to train NFL teams and the German national football team

Show notes:

1. Twitter: @StanfordVR
2. Faculty page: https://web.stanford.edu/~bailenso/

Get Jeremy's books:

1. Experience on Demand: https://amzn.to/2obxZba
2. Infinite Reality: https://amzn.to/2BKIg7U

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