The Proteus Effect

• We are running studies of the phenomenon that people tend to act in ways that are consistent with their avatars' identity characteristics.

Virtual Meeting Support for Enhanced Well-Being and Equity

• This is an NSF grant-funded series of projects focused on how virtual meeting platforms (e.g., in VR) relate to issues of well-being (e.g., zoom fatigue) and equity (e.g., gender differences), particularly in game development workplaces

Teaching in VR

• We are studying how to best design and implement classes taught in VR (which Dr. Ratan does in his Understanding VR and Avatar Psychology courses)

Human-Agent Interaction

• We have multiple studies of how people's interactions with agents (e.g., AI, robots, cars, e-scooters) can be designed to promote meaningful outcomes.

Mixed Reality Effects

• We are examining how looking at how passthrough in MR (vs. fully virtual experiences in VR) influences learning, social presence/absence, body ownership, spatial perceptions, etc.