CyberSightings

In the Spotlight

Up to now, virtual reality (VR) has been used with the goal of simulating real-life situations and experiences. For example, VR worlds are used to expose phobic patients to three-dimensional simulations of the feared object or situation in order to help them to handle the unsettling emotional reactions. However, a further opportunity offered by VR is the possibility of simulating “impossibile” worlds—that is, worlds that do not conform to the fundamental laws of logic and nature. This potential of VR was already recognized by Charles Tart, one of the leading researchers in the field of altered states of consciousness and transpersonal psychology, at the very beginning of VR technology. In a 1990 article, Tart wrote: “Suppose everything that has been learned to date about ground squirrels, rattlesnakes, their interactions, and their environment could be put into a simulation world, a computer-generated virtual reality. To a much greater extent than is now possible, you (and your colleagues) could see and hear the world from the point of view of a ground squirrel, walk through the tunnels a ground squirrel lives in, know what it is perceptually like to be in a world where the grass is as tall as you, and what it is like when a rattlesnake comes slithering down your tunnel! What kind of insights would that give you into what it is like to live in that kind of world?”. ^{1 (p226)}

The simulated violation of real-world constraints has been used for neuroscientific purposes, for example to explore cognitive and metacognitive processes. Suzuki et al. developed a novel experimental platform, referred to as a “substitutional reality” (SR) system, for studying the conviction of the perception of live reality and related metacognitive functions. ² The SR system was designed to allow for manipulating participants' perception of reality by allowing them to experience live scenes (in which they were physically present) and recorded scenes (which were recorded and edited in advance) in an alternating manner. Specifically, the authors' goal was to examine whether participants were able to identify a reality gap. Findings showed that most of the participants were induced to believe that they had experienced live scenes when recorded scenes were presented. However, according to Suzuki et al., the SR system offers several other ways to manipulate participants' reality. For example, the authors suggest that the SR system can cause participants to experience inconsistent or contradictory episodes, such as encountering themselves, or to experience déjà vu-like situations (e.g., repetitions of the same event such as conversations, or one-time-only events such as breaking a unique piece of art). Furthermore, SR allows for the implementation of a visual experience of worlds with different natural laws (e.g., weaker gravity or faster time).

Time alterations and time paradoxes (i.e., the possibility of changing history) represent another kind of impossible manipulation of physical reality that might be feasible in VR. For example, Friedman et al. (Front Psychol 2014; 5:943) described a method based on immersive VR for generating an illusion of having traveled backward through time to relive a sequence of events in which the individual can intervene and change history. ³ The authors consider this question: what if someone could travel back through time to experience a sequence of events and be able to intervene in order to change history? To answer this question, Friedman et al. simulated a sequence of events with a tragic outcome (deaths of strangers) in which the participant can virtually travel back to the past and undo actions that originally led to the unfortunate outcome. The participant is caught in a moral dilemma: if the subject does nothing, then five people will die for certain; if he acts then five people might be saved but another would die. Since the participant operates in a synthetic reality that does not obey the laws of physics (or logic), s/he is able to affect past events (therefore changing history), but in doing so s/he intervenes as a “ghost” that cannot be perceived by his/her past Doppelgänger.

One of the goals of the experiment was to examine the extent to which the experience of illusory time travel might influence attitudes toward morality, moral dilemmas, and “bad decisions” in personal history. The epistemic value of the experience, if successful, is that the subject would implicitly learn that the past is mutable. In particular, the authors speculated that the illusion of traveling in time might influence present-day attitudes—in particular, possibly lessening negative feelings associated with past decisions and giving a different perspective on past actions, including those associated with the experienced scenario. Findings showed that the virtual experience of time travel produced an increase in guilt feelings about the events that had occurred and an increase in support of utilitarian behavior as the solution to the moral dilemma. The experience of time travel also produced an increase in implicit morality as judged by an implicit association test. Interestingly, the time travel illusion was associated with a reduction of regret associated with bad decisions in the participants' own lives. The authors also argue that this kind of epistemic expansion (the illusion that the past can be changed) might have important consequences for present-day attitudes and beliefs, including implications for self-improvement and psychotherapy; for example, giving people an implicit sense that the past is mutable may be useful in releasing the grip of past traumatic memories in people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

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