Trust in the Metaverse

The metaverse is a technology platform that allows for immersive social interaction across a variety of shared virtual spaces, mediated through avatars. Trust has been known as the lubricant of social interaction in psychical spaces and past research has shown the importance of trust when social interaction transitions from physical to virtual spaces. Can trust be developed in the metaverse and if so, what facilitates its development? In a series of lab experiments, we focus on two key elements of the metaverse—social copresence and avatar usage—and examine their effect on trust building. We are filming and developing  experimental conditions in a virtual reality environment, which allows us a strong manipulation of both the digital representations of the interactors and social contexts where interactions take place. (With Bart Vannest, UCL, Phanish Puranam & Ithai Stern, INSEAD)

Researcher(s) from our Institute involved
Vivianna Fang He

Vivianna Fang He

Prof. Dr.
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