The contemporary understanding of gender continues to highlight the complexity and variety of gender identities beyond a binary dichotomy regarding one’s biological sex assigned at birth. The emergence and popularity of various online social spaces also makes the digital presentation of gender even more sophisticated. In this paper, we use non-cisgender as an umbrella term to describe diverse gender identities that do not match people’s sex assigned at birth, including Transgender, Genderfluid, and Non-binary. We especially explore non-cisgender individuals’ identity practices and their challenges in novel social Virtual Reality (VR) spaces where they can present, express, and experiment their identity in ways that traditional online social spaces cannot provide. We provide one of the first empirical evidence of how social VR platforms may introduce new and novel phenomena and practices of approaching diverse gender identities online. We also contribute to re-conceptualizing technology-supported identity practices by highlighting the role of (re)discovering the physical body online and informing the design of the emerging metaverse for supporting diverse gender identities in the future.

Current Social VR literature provides limited insight on one of the most critical behaviors for developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships: self-disclosure. Therefore, we present an online survey (N = 126) investigating how users disclose personal information to each other in Social VR. Our results indicate that many participants see in Social VR access to authentic connections with others despite tending towards skepticism and privacy concerns. Most users disclose sexuality-related information, lifestyle preferences, and personal goals. In contrast, information that breaks anonymity, such as real names and more intimate aspects of oneself, are shared less commonly. Thereby, self-disclosure decisions depend on factors like the relationship to or age of disclosure recipients, the privacy of a virtual environment, the group size, or the activity context, and is driven by different goals, i.a., relational development or exploration of oneself. These insights advance the understanding of current Social VR users and their behavior by directing future research on self-disclosure-based relationship building in Social VR and outlying broader design implications for the future metaverse.

Harassment has long been considered a severe social issue and a culturally contextualized construct. More recently, understanding and mitigating emerging harassment in social Virtual Reality (VR) has become a growing research area in HCI and CSCW. Based on the perspective of harassment in the U.S. culture, in this paper we identify new characteristics of online harassment in social VR using 30 in-depth interviews. We especially attend to how people who are already considered marginalized in the gaming and virtual worlds contexts (e.g., women, LGBTQ, and ethnic minorities) experience such harassment. As social VR is still a novel technology, our proactive approach highlights embodied harassment as an emerging but understudied form of harassment in novel online social spaces. Our critical review of social VR users' experiences of harassment and recommendations to mitigate such harassment also extends the current conceptualization of online harassment in CSCW. We therefore contribute to the active prevention of future harassment in nuanced online environments, platforms, and experiences.

Social virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a popular online space for teenagers to interact and socialize. It attracts teens due to the broad range of immersive activities and social engagement opportunities, along with diverse users in terms of age and interest. Yet, little is known about teenagers’ experiences and understandings of this emerging online social space, especially regarding what aspects may attract or dissuade them to social VR. To explore this question, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 teenagers (e.g., ages 13-18) and reported findings regarding what attracted them to engage in social VR and challenges with social VR that may dissuade them from using it. Our findings contribute to the growing body of scholarship on teenagers’ experiences in emerging, novel online social spaces and highlight potential design implications for creating safer and more fulfilling social VR experiences for teenagers.

Understanding how and why users reveal information about their self in online social spaces and what they perceive as privacy online is a central research agenda in HCI. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, in this paper we focus on what type of information users disclose, to whom they reveal information, and concerns they had regarding self-disclosure in social Virtual Reality (VR) - where multiple users can interact with one another through VR head-mounted displays in 3D virtual spaces. Our findings show that overall, users felt comfortable to disclose their emotions, personal experience, and personal information in social VR. However, they also acknowledged that disclosing personal information in social VR was an inevitable trade-off: giving up bio-metric information in order to better use the system. We contribute to existing literature on self-disclosure and privacy online by focusing on social VR as an emerging novel online social space. We also explicate implications for designing and developing future social VR applications.

Self-presentation in online digital social spaces has been a long standing research interest in HCI and CSCW. As online social spaces evolve towards more embodied digital representations, it is important to understand how users construct and experience their self and interact with others' self in new and more complicated ways, as it may introduce new opportunities and unseen social consequences. Using findings of an interview study (N=30), in this paper we report an in-depth empirical investigation of the presentation and perception of self in Social Virtual Reality (VR) - 3D virtual spaces where multiple users can interact with one another through VR head-mounted displays and full-body tracked avatars. This study contributes to the growing body of CSCW literature on social VR by offering empirical evidence of how social VR platforms afford new phenomena and approaches of novel identity practices and by providing potential design implications to further support such practices. We also expand the existing research agenda in CSCW on the increasing complexity of people's self-presentation in emerging novel sociotechnical systems.

Exploring communication dynamics in digital social spaces such as massively multiplayer online games and 2D/3D virtual worlds has been a long standing concern in HCI and CSCW. As online social spaces evolve towards more natural embodied interaction, it is important to explore how non-verbal communication can be supported in more nuanced ways in these spaces and introduce new social interaction consequences. In this paper we especially focus on understanding novel non-verbal communication in social virtual reality (VR). We report findings of two empirical studies. Study 1 collected observational data to explore the types of non-verbal interactions being used naturally in social VR. Study 2 was an interview study (N=30) that investigated people's perceptions of non-verbal communication in social VR as well as the resulting interaction outcomes. This study helps address the limitations in prior literature on non-verbal communication dynamics in online social spaces. Our findings on what makes non-verbal communication in social VR unique and socially desirable extend our current understandings of the role of non-verbal communication in social interaction. We also highlight potential design implications that aim at better supporting non-verbal communication in social VR.

Embodied virtual avatars can powerfully affect a user's behavior. Some changes in behavior can be positive, although some can be negative and unknown to the user. If the presence of stereotypical triggers lead to an increase in implicit racial bias a hypothesis could be made that embodying an immersive virtual avatar could negatively effect a user's implicit bias, this would be a serious cause for concern with regard to the recent emergence of consumer virtual reality. Here I explain a pilot study and potential next steps for my research.

In this paper, we present an initial study to investigate the effects stereotypical settings and avatar appearance of embodied avatars on a user's implicit racial bias. Literature demonstrates the effects embodied avatars can have on a users biases, both implicit and explicit. These shifts in bias and behavior could be caused by the avatars appearance or the stereotypical environment. Few studies have investigated the presence of stereotypical triggers and avatar representation in a learning, game-like environment. With virtual reality entertainment and training simulations becoming popular it is necessary to better understand the effects avatars can have on our behavior, perception, and biases. This study will investigate the potential effects of embodied avatars reinforcing a user's implicit racial biases.

Many questions still remain of the uses both positive and negative of virtual avatars. With virtual avatars primed for consumer entertainment, the effects they can elicit must be further investigated before mainstream adoption. In this paper we present an overview of the potential risks posed by virtual avatars. Followed by a study designed to investigate these risks, and finally ethical research considerations for researchers interested in conducting research with virtual avatars.

Abstract In augmented reality, people can feel the illusion of virtual humans (VHs) integrated into a real (physical) space. However, affordances of the real world and virtual contents might conflict, for example, when the VHs and real objects “collide” by occupying the same space. This implausible conflict can cause a break in presence in real–virtual human interactions. In this paper, we address an effort to avoid this conflict by maintaining the VH's spatial and behavioral coherence with respect to the physical objects or events (e.g., natural occlusions and appropriate help‐requesting behaviors to avoid implausible physical–virtual collisions). We present a human subject experiment examining the effects of the physical–virtual coherence on human perceptions, such as social/copresence and behaviors with the VH. The basic ideas, experimental design, and results supporting the benefit of the VH's spatial and behavioral coherence are presented and discussed.

Vection is the illusion of self-motion, usually induced by a visual stimulus. It is important in virtual reality because inducing it in motion simulations can lead to improved experiences. We examine linear and circular vection in commodity level head-mounted displays. We compare the experience of circular vection induced through a real world stimulus, an optokinetic drum, with that experienced through a virtual stimulus. With virtual stimuli, we also compare circular vection with linear horizontal and linear vertical vection. Finally, we examine circular and linear vection in more naturalistic virtual environments. Linear vection was induced more rapidly than any other type, but circular vection occurs more rapidly with a real world stimulus than a virtual one. Our results have practical application and can inform virtual reality design that uses head-mounted display technology and wishes to establish vection. Circular vection can be induced easily and rapidly through visual mechanisms that have been known since Mach [1]. We have an optokinetic drum that is capable of inducing compelling circular vection that works in almost all people we have tested in it. The goal of this project is thus twofold: (1) to see how well and how reliably vection can be induced in virtual reality with commodity-level HMDs as compared to real-world stimuli, and (2) to see if compelling vection could be comparably induced when the stimuli are complex naturalistic scenes, not abstract optic flow patterns.