Virtual Reality: The Ethical Dilemma
By Xander Townsend | Misfit Media Editor
There are many preconceived notions I had before starting my thesis in July of 2020. I experienced the juxtaposition of in person teaching vs online classes, I understood the workload now as a member of industry would increase, and I had the luxury of working in academia as well as studying it. The one thing I was not prepared for within my research in VR and emotional cognition was the ethics process.
An ethics application is required from academic institutions responsible for the participants in a study. They include a research protocol outlining aspects of the study including methodology, participants, data collection, analysis, and most importantly, any ethical considerations that need to be specified. When completing an Honours thesis (my current area of study), it is recommended that you have a 'low risk' research proposal (the ethically safest option).
As someone who is providing visual stimuli to gauge and incite emotions such as stress, anxiety, and even fear, a 'low risk' ethics application is a very difficult if not an impossible thing to do. Especially since I am working within a theoretically limitless medium, I have never had to tackle something so meticulous yet completely necessary.
The first aspect to tackle is the application itself and its accompanying documentation. Now, I am no stranger to lengthy applications but this process was one of the heftier ones. It is a particularly intimidating application and does require significant guidance from your research supervisors. It also can take weeks to be assessed by the research ethics committee so make sure you get it in super early (6-8 months before submission).
The second, and more conflicting aspect of this necessary process, was genuinely sitting down and analysing the potentially ethically harmful elements of your research. Now we have all seen The Matrix, so you understand the theoretically limitless ethical dilemmas of simulation theory and its role within existentialism. Not to mention that my research is completely based on the manipulation of human mind through a medium that is so young and unexplored. Base level, virtual reality has the capacity to 'trick' the human mind in so many facets and it is up to researchers to determine where the ethical lines should be drawn. That is a completely terrifying notion. Having the luxury of working in the VR industry within the mental health space has shown me how much potential VR has in medical and psychological fields. I just didn't expect to be one of the researchers defining the ethical limits of this integral yet potentially volatile medium.
After pulling myself back and looking at my research and experience as a whole, I realised I have the technical and theoretical skills to manipulate human emotion within VR. I now feel I have an ethical responsibility to make sure people understand how limitless VR actually is, especially within its capacity to manipulate the senses and trick the mind. Next time you put a headset on, think about how what you're seeing is manipulating your emotions, you might be surprised how much it can influence you.