A VR headset was distributed like a plate of pastries by a researcher at a small design conference in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. The majority of people put it on, glanced around for thirty seconds, let out a little startled sound, and then gave it to someone else. No one appeared surprised anymore. That is, in a sense, the current story of immersive technology. The wonder has faded into something more subdued and more in line with expectations. Beneath that change, a more intriguing question is emerging: can these tools truly alter people’s behavior for years, not just for an afternoon?
For more than 20 years, behavioral scientists have been cataloguing what they refer to as behavior change techniques. Identity priming, social comparison, goal-setting, and feedback loops. The list is lengthy. A cogent map between these methods and the technologies intended to deliver them has been lacking, as noted by researchers such as Maximilian Wittmann and colleagues at DTU in 2021. Even if you give someone a fitness tracker, it is unable to determine which psychological lever it is pulling. Even though it sounds boring, that gap is where the next ten years will be interesting.
The developers of this technology believe that immersive technology at last provides what previous interventions were unable to: the ability to place a person inside the consequence. The classic example is climate behavior. One shrugs when they read about sea level rise. Something else happens when you stand on a virtual beach and feel the water creep up your ankles. Nobody really knows yet if that something else means recycling more, taking fewer flights, or voting differently. There are very few long-term studies, but the early ones are encouraging.
Most people are unaware of how quickly healthcare is evolving. VR programs for chronic pain and rehabilitation have been quietly implemented in hospitals in Germany and the Netherlands, and even the clinicians are surprised by the outcomes. If a game is incorporated into the physiotherapy exercises, patients who detested them will perform them for an hour. The more difficult question is whether the habit persists after the headset is removed. Behavioral interventions have always been hampered by adherence, and immersive design has only delayed the problem rather than resolved it.
Then there’s the awkward topic of robots in this discussion. Social robots have demonstrated an odd ability to elicit behaviors from elderly patients that nurses are unable to, especially in Japan and Scandinavia. Sometimes a tiny, blinking machine will give medication to a resident who won’t take it for a human. It is difficult to ignore how some researchers find this uncomfortable, while others find it exciting. Both responses seem plausible.
Tania Ramos warned of a behaviorally optimized tech dystopia in the Behavioral Scientist collection from early 2020, and that concern has held up well. It is possible to repurpose the same mechanisms that make a meditation app effective to keep someone scrolling at two in the morning. Both directions are amplified by immersive technology. With a few adjustments, a virtual reality setting intended to foster empathy could create something more harmful. The ethical infrastructure in the field is still lacking compared to its technical infrastructure, and the gap is growing.
It’s likely that the next ten years will be more chaotic than the press releases portray. Headsets will become more affordable and lighter. Ordinary rooms will become infected with mixed reality. Apps for behavior modification will begin to heavily, sometimes excessively, borrow from game design. Certain interventions will result in significant, long-lasting change. Many won’t. The truth is that we are conducting a massive, uncontrolled experiment on ourselves, and the results will come gradually. As you watch all of this happen, it seems like understanding is walking while technology is running. The real work is waiting in that gap.
