Transformative Experiences Become More Accessible Through Virtual Reality

Space—A Virtual Frontier: How to Design and Evaluate a Virtual Reality Experience of the Overview Effect

“…Since OE is a very complex phenomenon, we propose to design a comprehensive system of multiple evaluation methods combining introspective, physiological, implicit attitudes and behavioral measures. Our transformative experiences framework outlines how a transformative experience such as OE can be assessed at different stages of the experience and what role VR can play in that process (Stepanova et al, 2018). Since our goal is to capture an individual's experience, introspective measures is often our best available option for assessing personal experiences.…”

“…(White, 2014, p. 17) "To me the difference between getting and not getting an "aha" experience of it is whether it shifts your structure a bit. Do you get a sense of freedom, of expansiveness, because you've just experienced something that is different from your previous experiences and beliefs" (White, 2014, p. 25) As such, the VR experience needs to be designed with a goal to induce this dissonance and facilitate accommodation, as discussed in Stepanova et al (2018) and Gaggioli (2016).…”

“…To achieve these two goals, we are analyzing the spacetravelers reports described and summarized in White (2014) and Gallagher et al (2015) books on the OE, as well as the scientific research investigating this phenomenon (Yaden et al, 2016). We also draw from theories about transformative experience design (Gaggioli, 2016;Kitson et al, 2018;Stepanova et al, 2018). As such, this paper presents a focused psychological review on positive transformative experiences and proposes specific guidelines that can be implemented by VR developers.…”

Understanding AWE: Can a Virtual Journey, Inspired by the Overview Effect, Lead to an Increased Sense of Interconnectedness?

“…Virtual Reality (VR) technology with its controllability and ability to afford sense of presence could provide us with a unique medium to design for and study awe-inspiring experiences (Chirico et al, 2016), making them more accessible to the public and researchers (Stepanova et al, 2018). The potential of immersive technology to create applications for positive change has been widely explored in different contexts, see reviews in Kitson et al (2018a) and Riva et al (2016).…”

Hybrid Cognitive-Affective Strategies for AI Safety

“…As a side-effect, the design of such XR scenarios for testing AU-based ethical goal functions could also promote a dedicated positive computing [94] by enabling an approximate projected experience of future well-being in the present [14]. Even if the AI-computed projections will mostly not correspond in a one-to-one fashion to actual future scenarios also due to their inherent unpredictability, XR could thereby function as helpful positive technology with beneficial transformative prosocial effects [104,177,178,345,350,358,395,449,463] including ethical enhancement and debiasing [14]. Finally, for an efficient and responsible AI governance, it has been suggested to convey the responsibility for the design of AU-based ethical goal func- tions to a representation of society e.g.…”