“In the metaverse, you can be anyone or anywhere,” said Eugy Han, lead author of a new study. This ability to choose one’s virtual environment and avatar, though currently from a restrictive list of options, forms a large part of the appeal of virtual reality (VR) for most. Now, researchers at Stanford University are studying the effects of how these choices affect social interactions in the metaverse.

“Minor decisions made by metaverse designers will have a psychological impact on users,” the researchers noted in their paper.

The study, published in the Computer Mediated Communication Journalnoted that when individuals are part of a group, they become “interdependent” and nonverbal dynamics such as “motion synchrony,” or coordinated movements, and face-to-face…