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The goal of this article is to present a first list of ethical concerns that may arise from research and personal use of virtual reality (VR) and related technology, and to offer concrete recommendations for minimizing those risks. Many of the recommendations call for focused research initiatives. In the first part of the article, we discuss the relevant evidence from psychology that motivates our concerns. In Section "Plasticity in the Human Mind," we cover some of the main results suggesting that one's environment can influence one's psychological states, as well as recent work on inducing illusions of embodiment. Then, in Section "Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect," we go on to discuss recent evidence indicating that immersion in VR can have psychological effects that last after leaving the virtual environment. In the second part of the article, we turn to the risks and recommendations. We begin, in Section "The Research Ethics of VR," with the research ethics of VR, covering six main topics: the limits of experimental environments, informed consent, clinical risks, dual-use, online research, and a general point about the limitations of a code of conduct for research. Then, in Section "Risks for Individuals and Society," we turn to the risks of VR for the general public, covering four main topics: long-term immersion, neglect of the social and physical environment, risky content, and privacy. We offer concrete recommendations for each of these 10 topics, summarized in Table 1.

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The main argument of the book is as follows: (1) The descriptive premise: The phenomenology of vision is best described as an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. (2) The empirical premise: There are strong empirical reasons to model vision using the general form of anticipation and fulfillment. (AF) Conclusion: Visual perception is an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. The book consists of three parts and an appendix. The first part of the book makes the case for premise (1) based on descriptive claims about the nature of first-person experience. The initial support for (1) in Chapter 2 is based on the fact that visual experience has the general features of being perspectival, temporal, and indeterminate. Chapter 3 includes an argument for (1) based on the possibility of surprise when appearances do not change as we expect, and Chapter 4 contains a discussion of the content of visual anticipations. The second part of the book focuses on empirical support. Chapter 5 covers a range of evidence from perceptual psychology that motivates premise (2). Chapter 6 turns to evidence from neuroscience, including recent work in predictive coding. The seventh chapter shows how evidence for the two-visual systems hypothesis can be re-interpreted in support of (2). The third part of the book turns to general methodological questions (Chapter 8) and the relationship between visual perception and social cognition (Chapter 9). The appendix addresses the ways in which Husserlian phenomenology relates to the main theme of the book.