Review of Virtual Environment Studies on Social and Group Phenomena

This article provides a review of previously published studies on virtual environments (VEs), focusing especially on empirical articles on social and group phenomena in VEs and their methodological and theoretical trends. VEs can be defined as communication systems in which interactants share the same three-dimensional digital space and can navigate, manipulate objects, and interact with one another via avatars. When examining the methodological and theoretical choices of these studies, four trends could be identified that characterize group studies on VEs: (a) testing the applicability of real-life, social behavior norms in VEs, (b) a lack of work group studies using VEs, (c) the micro-level treatment of social and groups, and (d) a lack of covering theory. Propositions for future research are presented.