Virtual Reality for Criminologists: A Road Map

“…showing that much human behavior, including criminal behavior, is driven by automatic cognitive processes that by de fi nition defy deliberate retrieval and, by implication, valid registration through interviews and survey instruments (Nisbett and Wilson 1977; Kahneman 2011; Nee et al. 2019).”

“…resulting in important events being forgotten, sequences reversed, or timing warped; and biases such as social desirability and demand characteristics distorting reality are only some of the challenges confronting these methods (Sykes and Matza 1957; Tulving 2002; Warr 2002; Krumpal 2013).”

“…and Hirschi 1990), developmental/life-course paradigms (Samp-son and Laub 1993, 2003), labeling perspectives (Becker 1968), strain theories (Agnew 1992), and differential association and social learning frameworks (e.g., Sutherland 1947; Akers 1973), have all prioritized studying…”

“Although challenges relating to introspective and retrospective meth-ods are not restricted to the study of crime, they are compounded compared with domains in which people generally have little reason to conceal their intentions or conduct (Exum and Bouffard 2010).”

“In a study by Slater and colleagues (2006) designed to replicate Milgram ’ s famous obedience experiment (Milgram 1963), research participants delivered “ electric shocks ” to a virtual trainee when she made errors during a word association memory test.”

“…resulting in important events being forgotten, sequences reversed, or timing warped; and biases such as social desirability and demand characteristics distorting reality are only some of the challenges confronting these methods (Sykes and Matza 1957; Tulving 2002; Warr 2002; Krumpal 2013).”

“Research indicates that psychological transportation to the VR may occur on very brief timescales; it may only be a matter of moments before users react toward the virtual world as if it were real (e.g., Slater 2009; Slater and Sanchez-Vives 2016; Pan and Hamilton 2018).”

“Indeed, ample evidence suggests that feelings such as fear and anger exert a strong in fl uence on decision-making processes and that people are generally oblivious to their effect on behavior (Loewenstein 1996; Wilson and Gilbert 2003).”

“The Proteus Effect is the phenomenon by which users infer their expected behaviors and attitudes from observing their avatar ’ s appearance (Yee and Bailenson 2007; Yee, Bailenson, and Ducheneaut 2009).”

“It has been suggested that “ the fact that minimal cues are enough to induce presence implies that the absence of some degree of sensory information is not distracting, and is probably fi lled in by cortical processing ” (Sanchez-Vives and Slater 2005, p. 337).”

“As Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007, p. 397) observe, research has abundantly shown that “ people have not always done what they say they have done, will not always do what they say they will do, and often do not even know the real causes of the things they do.”

“One frequently used paradigm to study moral decision-making is the well-known Trolley Problem (Thomson 1976).”

“In his classic work Companions in Crime , Mark Warr (2002, p. 120) concludes that one reason why peer explanations of delin-quency are contentious and unsettled is that the evidence for peer effects is largely correlational and often highly inferential: “ despite strong and persistent evidence of peer in fl uence in th…”

“Indeed, such methods have proved to be invaluable sources of information (e.g., Wright and Decker 1994, 1997; Shover 1996; Maruna 2001; Sampson and Laub 2003).”

“Provided certain conditions are met, virtual embodiment can lead to the temporary illusion of body ownership or “ transformation ” (Slater et al. 2010; Bombari et al. 2015; Mol 2019).”

“The bystander effect refers to the well-known assumption that people ’ s feelings of responsibility to intervene in emer-gencies diffuse with the presence of other bystanders (e.g., Darley and Latané 1968; Fischer et al. 2011).”

“…to discrepancies between the internal expectations of the user and the actual VR feedback, for example, a delay between the user ’ s head movement and the visual feedback from the VR. Symptoms can include motion sickness, ocular strain, and degraded limb and postural control (Schuemie et al. 2001).”

“…research may have, inadvertently, reinforced the idea that crimes are the result of rational decisions in which feelings play no signi fi cant or systematic role, as argued by in fl uential criminal decision-making perspectives (e.g., Clarke and Cornish 1985; Clarke 2013; van Gelder et al. 2014).”

“…which “ occurs when part or all of a person ’ s perception fails to accurately acknowledge the role of technology that makes it appear that s/he is in a physical location and environment different from her/his actual location and environment in the physical world ” (Wirth et al. 2007, p. 495).”

“Even behaviors that were once deliberate (e.g., learning how to drive a car) can become automatic after repeated practice (DePaulo 1992).”

“To be sure, users remain aware that the environment they are seeing is not the real world, but, provided certain conditions are met, this does not prevent them from responding to it in realistic ways (Slater 2009, 2018).”

“For example, Yee, Bailenson, and Ducheneaut (2009) found that people embodying a taller avatar in VR negotiated more ag-gressively in subsequent face-to-face interactions than participants given shorter avatars.”

“Early pioneering work by Nagin and colleagues (Klepper and Nagin 1989; Nagin and Paternoster 1993, 1994) started using vignettes to provide context surrounding (hypothetical) offenses thought to be relevant for people ’ s decisions (van Gelder and Nagin 2023).”

“In plainer terms, VR can be described as human-computer interaction with an invisible interface that occurs in naturalistic fashion (Schultheis and Rizzo 2001).”

“This generates a naturalistic, or at least intuitive, viewing experience that matches the critical properties of our real-world viewing experience, which involves three-dimensional vision all around and visual scenes that are updated in sync with one ’ s head movement (Pan and Hamilton 2018).”

“…can also be involved, and the visual experience can be complemented with software and hardware that render it more immersive, including spatial-ized sounds that users hear as if they are emanating from the surrounding three-dimensional auditory space (Loomis, Blascovich, and Beall 1999, p. 558).”

“…racial bias (Dotsch and Wigboldus 2008; Peck, Good, and Seitz 2021), disorderly conduct (Toet and van Schaik 2012), obedience and authoritarianism (Slater et al. 2006), aggression (Slater et al. 2013; van Gelder et al. 2019; van Gelder, De Vries, et al. 2022), moral dilemmas (Navarrete et al.…”

“…scientists have convincingly shown that automatic and unconscious processes (e.g., appraisal of one ’ s environment) exert a pervasive and ubiquitous in fl uence on human perception, information processing, judgments, and behavior (e.g., Wilson 2004; Custers and Aarts 2010; Kahneman 2011).”

“Furthermore, the decontextualized and generally contrived nature of experimental lab settings limits their ecological validity (e.g., Steinberg and Cauffman 1996; Blascovich et al. 2002).”

“…designs; in the nonrandomized setting the burden of proof is on the shoulders of the investigator to show that the relevant confounders have been taken into account, and it will be dif fi cult to avoid lingering disagreement about the success of the attempt to achieve this (Raudenbush 2001, p. 523).”

“Flight simulators that provide training environments for pilots are an example of how VEs have been usefully applied in domains where using real-life situations carry risk (Fox, Arena, and Bailenson 2009).”

“…of sensory input provided to participants through hardware (Bombari et al. 2015), the term “ presence ” refers to a user ’ s subjective sense of “ being there ” (i.e., in the VE) and the tendency to respond to virtual events and environments as if they are real (Slater 2004; Slater et al. 2006).”

“Rosenberg, Baughman, and Bailenson (2013) found that participants embodying an avatar with the superhero ability to fl y engaged in increased helping behavior in the real world immediately after the ex-periment, compared to participants in the control condition who were passengers in a virtual…”

“” An avatar is the digital representation of a user whose behaviors are executed in real time by him or her (Nowak and Fox 2018).”

“In other words, the viewing experience in VR corresponds with what a user would see (and possibly hear and feel) if the scene were real (Rizzo and Koenig 2017).”

“Short fi xations indicate information scanning and lower-level automatic processing, while higher-level deliberate processing prolongs fi xation durations (Glöckner and Herbold 2011).”

“Early pioneering work by Nagin and colleagues (Klepper and Nagin 1989; Nagin and Paternoster 1993, 1994) started using vignettes to provide context surrounding (hypothetical) offenses thought to be relevant for people ’ s decisions (van Gelder and Nagin 2023).”

“Early pioneering work by Nagin and colleagues (Klepper and Nagin 1989; Nagin and Paternoster 1993, 1994) started using vignettes to provide context surrounding (hypothetical) offenses thought to be relevant for people ’ s decisions (van Gelder and Nagin 2023).”

“…in front of a virtual audience, people experience similar reactions as when in front of a real audience (e.g., increased heart rate, sweaty palms; Harris, Kemmerling, and North 2002), and shy males show higher anxiety when interacting with a virtual female than con fi dent males (Pan et al. 2012).”

“This phenomenon is known as the Uncanny Valley (Mori 1970; Stein and Ohler 2017).”

“decision-making that underlies it (Birkbeck and LaFree 1993).”

“…or online research platforms, have ethical and practical restrictions in terms of the type and severity of the behavior that can be studied (e.g., Nagin and Pogarsky 2003), or they rely on behavioral intentions using vignettes rather than measuring actual behavior(e.g., van Gelder and De Vries…”

“…to examine the effects of peers on delinquency, a disorganized neighborhood or street segment to study the effect of disorder, embodied versions of economic games (see van Loon et al. 2018), or moral decision-making dilemmas such as the Trolley Problem (Navarrete et al. 2012; Francis et al. 2017).”

“For example, norms, such as interpersonal distance, are kept when interacting with virtual humans (Gonzalez-Franco and Lanier 2017).”

“…to establish the effect of emotions on criminal decision-making may have systematically underestimated their importance and that rational choice based perspectives provide inaccurate, or at least incomplete, descriptions of choice processes (see also Loewenstein, Nagin, and Paternoster 1997).”

“Behavioral fi eld experiments and ethnographic work among active offenders (e.g., Shover 1996; Jacobs and Wright 1999; Topalli and Wright 2013), however, although high in ecological validity, tend to be subject to myriad extraneous variables, observer subjectivity, and the challenge of…”

“Think, for example, of a barroom or other nightlife venue to study aggressive behavior (see van Gelder et al. 2019; van Gelder, De Vries, et al. 2022), a generic public area to examine the effects of peers on delinquency, a disorganized neighborhood or street segment to study the effect of disorder, embodied versions…”

“…have ethical and practical restrictions in terms of the type and severity of the behavior that can be studied (e.g., Nagin and Pogarsky 2003), or they rely on behavioral intentions using vignettes rather than measuring actual behavior(e.g., van Gelder and De Vries 2012, 2014; Kamerdze et al. 2014).”

“People keep more distance from out-group compared to in-group virtual humans (Dotsch and Wigboldus 2008) and are also more likely to intervene in a virtual con fl ict when the “ victim ” is perceived as belonging to their in-group than when a member of an out-group (Slater et al. 2013).”

“People keep more distance from out-group compared to in-group virtual humans (Dotsch and Wigboldus 2008) and are also more likely to intervene in a virtual con fl ict when the “ victim ” is perceived as belonging to their in-group than when a member of an out-group (Slater et al. 2013).”

“Furthermore, states of arousal (e.g., anger or sexual excitement) can be measured noninvasively via eye tracking by relying on pupil dilation (Rahal and Fiedler 2019).”

“To create an effective VE in which presence takes place, a user needs to let go of the awareness and knowledge that the stimuli in the VE are in fact not real, which is referred to as suspension of disbelief (Waterworth and Waterworth 2001).”

“Different users can experience different levels of presence in the environment with the same level of immersion, depending on a range of factors such as state of mind, personality, and emotional state (Ling et al. 2013; Wilson and Soranzo 2015).”

“…as synchrony between the user ’ s own physical body movements and those of her avatar, this substitution of a person ’ s real body by an apparently coincident virtual body can lead to the illusion of embodiment (Bailey, Bailenson, and Casasanto 2016), also referred to as virtual body ownership.”

“…for example, control theories (Hirschi 1969; Gott-fredson and Hirschi 1990), developmental/life-course paradigms (Samp-son and Laub 1993, 2003), labeling perspectives (Becker 1968), strain theories (Agnew 1992), and differential association and social learning frameworks (e.g.,…”

“…that has been used to provide some contextual information while retaining control over the variables contained in the situation is the use of vignettes or written hypothetical scenarios (e.g., Exum 2002; Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Armstrong and Boutwell 2012; van Gelder and De Vries 2012, 2014).”

“…that has been used to provide some contextual information while retaining control over the variables contained in the situation is the use of vignettes or written hypothetical scenarios (e.g., Exum 2002; Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Armstrong and Boutwell 2012; van Gelder and De Vries 2012, 2014).”

“Think, for example, of a barroom or other nightlife venue to study aggressive behavior (see van Gelder et al. 2019; van Gelder, De Vries, et al. 2022), a generic public area to examine the effects of peers on delinquency, a disorganized neighborhood or street segment to study the effect of…”

“The necessity to reduce these data to a manageable and interpretable form can be complex and challenging, and adding new features (e.g., multiuser VR, facial expression recognition) will multiply these data streams (Yaremych and Persky 2019).”

“…et al. 2017), self-regulation (Renaud et al. 2011; Knif fi n et al. 2014), risk assessment (Fromberger, Jordan, and Müller 2018), sexual harassment (Neyret et al. 2020), delinquency (van Gelder, Hersh fi eld, and Nordgren 2013; van Gelder, Cornet, et al. 2022), and crime (Nee et al. 2019; van…”

“…in front of a virtual audience, people experience similar reactions as when in front of a real audience (e.g., increased heart rate, sweaty palms; Harris, Kemmerling, and North 2002), and shy males show higher anxiety when interacting with a virtual female than con fi dent males (Pan et al. 2012).”

“…Sutherland 1947; Akers 1973), have all prioritized studying properties of individuals and the social factors that propel them into and out of crime (e.g., peers, romantic partners, gangs, parents, dispositions, neighborhoods) over their decision-making and explaining the crime event (Nagin 2007).”

“Since the mind cannot be present in different places at the same time, feeling present in a VE implies psychological absence in the real world, which can trick the brain into accepting the VE as the “ real ” environment (Bailenson 2018 a ).”

“As vision is our dominant sense (i.e., more than 50 percent of neural tissue is related to vision; Sells and Fixott 1957), the visual aspect of VR is also its critical feature.”

“Recent work based on the analysis of CCTV footage of actual events in three different countries (South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) shows that this novel methodological approach sheds new light on the intervening behavior of bystanders (e.g., Philpot et al. 2019, 2020).”

“Indeed, VBP research has replicated fi ndings of earlier burglary research using conventional research methods (Nee et al. 2015, 2019).”

“To test decision models, it is therefore important that research designs provide contextual cues to activate the relevant associations and emotions (Loe-wenstein 1999; Innocenti 2017).”

“Several studies have demonstrated correspondence between behavior in the virtual world and in the real world (e.g., Slater et al. 2006; Nee et al. 2015, 2019), but more research is necessary to examine to what extent these fi ndings hold over different situations, under what conditions, and among…”

“…et al. 2006), aggression (Slater et al. 2013; van Gelder et al. 2019; van Gelder, De Vries, et al. 2022), moral dilemmas (Navarrete et al. 2012; Francis et al. 2017), self-regulation (Renaud et al. 2011; Knif fi n et al. 2014), risk assessment (Fromberger, Jordan, and Müller 2018), sexual…”

“…relevant to criminologists, such as stereotyping and racial bias (Dotsch and Wigboldus 2008; Peck, Good, and Seitz 2021), disorderly conduct (Toet and van Schaik 2012), obedience and authoritarianism (Slater et al. 2006), aggression (Slater et al. 2013; van Gelder et al. 2019; van Gelder,…”

“…VR may lead people to more easily “ forget ” about their behavior, especially when being involved in an absorbing task (see the next subsection for an example), and to be less self-conscious when interacting with others compared to interacting in, say, a laboratory setting (Jouriles et al. 2009).”

“…that has been used to provide some contextual information while retaining control over the variables contained in the situation is the use of vignettes or written hypothetical scenarios (e.g., Exum 2002; Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Armstrong and Boutwell 2012; van Gelder and De Vries 2012, 2014).”

“Furthermore, VR may be experienced as more engaging and motivating than traditional intervention programs, especially among young offenders who tend to be digital natives (Cornet and van Gelder 2020, 2023).”

“As Eck and Liu (2008, p. 196) observe, the study of crime is the only scienti fi c enterprise where deception is intentional and endemic.”

“Jouriles et al. (2016) studied bystander behavior in response to violent sexual advances.”

“This makes it dif fi cult to train violent of-fenders to control their anger by provoking them using real-life social situations (Klein Tuente et al. 2018).”

“…al. 2022), moral dilemmas (Navarrete et al. 2012; Francis et al. 2017), self-regulation (Renaud et al. 2011; Knif fi n et al. 2014), risk assessment (Fromberger, Jordan, and Müller 2018), sexual harassment (Neyret et al. 2020), delinquency (van Gelder, Hersh fi eld, and Nordgren 2013; van Gelder,…”

“As Topalli, Dickinson, and Jacques (2020) observe, a drawback of interviewing offenders in prison is that their memories and assessments of their offending before they were caught are colored by their current institutionalized context.”

“…have ethical and practical restrictions in terms of the type and severity of the behavior that can be studied (e.g., Nagin and Pogarsky 2003), or they rely on behavioral intentions using vignettes rather than measuring actual behavior(e.g., van Gelder and De Vries 2012, 2014; Kamerdze et al. 2014).”

“People are, for example, more practiced in controlling what they say than in controlling their (nonverbal) behavior (Caso et al. 2006).”

“Indeed, VBP research has replicated fi ndings of earlier burglary research using conventional research methods (Nee et al. 2015, 2019).”

“An experimental study speaking to the potential of VR for theory testing, examined the effect of different levels of guardianship on burglar de-terrence (van Sintemaartensdijk et al. 2021, fi g. 1).”

“People ’ s eye movement may, for instance, reveal aspects of scenes that contribute to fear of crime that they would not consider reporting in surveys or would not normally be detected by conventional methods (Crosby and Hermens 2019).”

“Furthermore, there is a growing evidence base showing that studies using VR can replicate well-established fi ndings of social and behavioral science research (Bombari et al. 2015), including criminology (Nee et al. 2015; van Gelder et al. 2017; Meenaghan et al. 2018).”

“…a nascent research literature on a variety of phenomena relevant to criminologists, such as stereotyping and racial bias (Dotsch and Wigboldus 2008; Peck, Good, and Seitz 2021), disorderly conduct (Toet and van Schaik 2012), obedience and authoritarianism (Slater et al. 2006), aggression (Slater…”

“Here, context refers to aspects of not only the physical environment (e.g., lighting, disorder) but also the social environment (e.g., peers, guardians, instigators, co-offenders; Barnum and Pogarsky 2022).”

“Researchers should exercise caution and pursue user-centered instead of technology-driven approaches and ideally involve people with pertinent lived experiences in the design process (Teng and Gordon 2021).”

“In a similar vein, fi eld experiments, a relatively rare occurrence in crim-inology (Weisburd 2003; Dezember et al. 2021), although more capable of establishing causality and mitigating potential confounders, are unable to provide access into the mechanisms that drive the behavior.”

“In short, eye tracking enables researchers to tap into the offender ’ s, victim ’ s, or bystander ’ s perspective in an almost literal sense (e.g., Jacques, Lasky, and Fisher 2015).”

“Early pioneering work by Nagin and colleagues (Klepper and Nagin 1989; Nagin and Paternoster 1993, 1994) started using vignettes to provide context surrounding (hypothetical) offenses thought to be relevant for people ’ s decisions (van Gelder and Nagin 2023).”

“That is, an intervention may work for the hypothesized reason, but also for other reasons not considered in the research design (Van Gelder, 2023).”

“Therefore, empirical approaches are required that more mean-ingfully capture emotion-laden features of a crime opportunity (van Gelder, 2023).”

“This allows for a realistic simulation of criminogenic environments, which offenders can navigate to demonstrate decision-making under circum-stances resembling the conditions of a controlled behavioral experiment in a safe and ethical way (van Gelder, 2023; van Gelder et al., 2014).”

“It is crucial that researchers adhere to strict protocols protecting individuals’ security given the vulnerability of offender populations (Van Gelder, 2023).”

“Virtual reality (VR) technology capitalizes on the benefits of vignette and ethnographic studies while minimizing some of their limitations (Nee et al., 2019; van Gelder, 2023; van Gelder et al., 2019; van Gelder & van Daele, 2014; van Sintemaartensdijk et al., 2021).”

“Virtual reality may provide an exciting opportunity to study the tactics of peer in fl uence, as one could ask youth to do their best to persuade another (virtual) adolescent to engage in some deviant act (van Gelder 2023).”

“It is most often used to understand topics like offender rehabilitation (Cornet & Van Gelder, 2020), offender motivation (Van Gelder, 2023), victimization experiences (Ruiz-Ortega et al., 2023), and police responses to domestic disputes (Kelygrewe et al., 2023).”

“VR’s potential for criminology is particularly significant, as it enables the observation of criminal behaviors under controlled conditions while maintaining ethical research standards (Cornet and van Gelder 2023; Fox, Arena, and Bailenson 2009; van Gelder et al. 2014).”

“…evidence that immersive technologies, in particular virtual reality (VR), are an excellent way to address problems that have hindered our understanding of crime within the criminological field and to study phenomena that are hard to study due to ethical or practical reasons (van Gelder, 2023).”

“Unlike traditional, often linear media, in which the user remains a passive observer of the unfolding narrative, VR is interactive, enabling users to influence the unfolding scenario and course of events (Van Gelder, 2023 ).”

“Researchers can then implement these into an experimental design using experimental vignettes or virtual reality to capture real-time reactions as scenarios unfold (Van Gelder, 2023) or within-subjects designs to present multiple versions of the same scenario (Van Petegem et al., 2021).”

“This ability to recreate complex and realistic interactions makes XR particularly valuable for understanding and evaluating forensic phenomena (Van Gelder, 2023).”

“By recreating plausible yet controlled environments, VR enables researchers to simulate high-risk urban settings and observe how individuals respond to potential victimization scenarios (Cornet & Gelder, 2023; van Gelder, 2023; van Gelder et al., 2014).”

“Essentially, VR is a method of transport to a situation of interest [15] .”

“However, these tools mainly provide retrospective insights into offenders’ and victims’ backgrounds rather than real-time behaviors and decisions (van Gelder, 2023).”

“Furthermore, the lack of support for AI-driven literature discovery tools may hinder criminologists’ ability to engage with cutting-edge research and make meaningful contributions to interdisciplinary discussions (van Gelder, 2023).”

“The primary advantages of VR in this regard are standardization and replicability (van Gelder 2023).”