Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

In an article by Health24 titled "Virtual World May Impact Real-World Behavior," Gunwoo Yoon and Patrick Vargas note that "virtual environments afford people the opportunity to take on identities and experience circumstances that they otherwise can't in real life, providing 'a vehicle for observation, imitation, and modeling." The study required 194 undergraduate students to play a game for 5 minutes either as Superman (a hero), Voldemort (a villain) or a circle (neutral). The students were then asked to pour different amounts of chocolate or chili sauce for a future participant to eat. On average, the Superman players poured more chocolate and the Voldemort players poured more chili sauce, showing evidence that assuming a virtual personality can carry into real life decisions. 

In another article by CNN, Mark Tutton reports on "Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life" where companies are seeking more ways to bring employees together for conferences and meetings in a world where travel budgets are being cut. This would allow employees to come together for meetings in a cheap and convenient matter. Currently, there are 14 reported companies that are testing Second Life in its beta phase. Similarly, in a world where people have more to pay out in bills and less on recreational spending, virtual reality allows for people to experience a life with no limitations or as Ruth La Ferla of NYT says with "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You."  

Given these three examples, we can already tell that virtual reality can be in more ways than one. Most importantly, virtual reality can provide ease and convenience where reality cannot. For example, using virtual reality can provide access to locations that are not accessible by human characters themselves. Additionally, virtual reality can allow people to have personas that are different from the ones that they hold in real life. This allows people to live out their dreams and fantasies that would otherwise be unattainable in real life. While these are some of the pros to virtual reality, these reasons can also pose cons or disadvantages. Having ease and convenience can lead to laziness or lack of effort. Additionally, being able to take on a different persona, whether it be a good or bad one, can affect one's behavior in real life. It can disappoint some when virtual reality can never be real and for others, it can be harmful if bad personas are carried out in real life. 

For those exact reasons, virtual reality can foster creativity because things that would otherwise be impossible, become possible and real (in a virtual world). People are able to bring ideas/wants/needs to fruition and they can experience those things through a fictional character. I think the future of virtual worlds will eventually become more and more realistic, to the point where it will be hard to tell the difference between what is real or not. Personally, I think virtual reality will become more harmful as people are able to put more of themselves into it. There should always exist a clear distinction between reality and virtual.