Katharina-Maria Behr Andreas Nosper Christoph Klimmt* Tilo Hartmann Department of Journalism and Communication Research Hanover University of Music and Drama Hanover, Germany *Correspondence to christoph.klimmt@ijk.hmt- hannover.de Presence, Vol. 14, No. 6, December 2005, 668 – 676 © 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Some Practical Considerations of Ethical Issues in VR Research Abstract As scientific laboratories are an important domain of application of VR technology, ethical issues of VR have to be discussed with respect to research and the treat- ment of research subjects. Exposing participants to VR systems may raise ethical problems due to motion sickness, information overload, intensification of experi- ence, and difficulties with reentry into the real world. The ethical guidelines which are typically applied to psychological research do not cover all of these problems in detail and have to be reconsidered, since they have not been developed with re- gard to the use of VR systems. Therefore, practical strategies to cope with the ad- dressed ethical problems in VR research are recommended. 1 Some Practical Considerations on Ethical Issues in VR Research The advent of virtual reality (VR) technologies and their diverse applica- tions has raised numerous legal and ethical questions. In this paper, we focus on the specific ethical problems involved in scientific research with high perfor- mance VR systems and discuss strategies to cope with them. Most often, high- end VR systems can be found in research laboratories, so when it comes to ethical issues in the domain of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environ- ments, it is reasonable to discuss ethical implications of VR with respect to how scientists treat the participants of their virtual reality studies. Social scientists are proud of a long tradition of considering ethical issues in research whenever humans (and animals) are intended to participate in an in- vestigation. In general, ethical theories are divided into teleological and deon- tological approaches (Smith, 2000; Patry, 2002). According to teleological the- ories (and specifically the utilitarian approach), actions are judged by their consequences, that is, the end justifies the means. Consequently, an action is appraised as good or at least acceptable, whenever its outcomes serve the soci- ety. Thus, according to a strict teleological approach, employing humans or animals as subjects in an experiment is legitimate as long as the outcome of the research serves society’s purposes. In contrast, deontological theories appraise actions by themselves and re- gardless of their consequences, that is, the result of an action does not justify the means. Actions are judged as right or wrong in the light of higher princi- ples, such as the untouchable dignity of all humans. Such a deontological view is reflected by Kant’s imperative “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” From this perspective, any suffer- 668 PRESENCE: VOLUME 14, NUMBER 6