Jeremy Bailenson

About

Jeremy Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and holds the position of Thomas More Storke Professor in the Department of Communication. He is also a Professor (by courtesy) of Education, a member of the Program in Symbolic Systems, and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Bailenson earned his B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of Michigan in 1994, followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Northwestern University in 1996 and 1999, respectively. He spent four years at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor. His research focuses on the psychology of Virtual and Augmented Reality, particularly how virtual experiences influence perceptions of self and others. His lab develops and studies systems that enable virtual social interactions and investigates how these experiences can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health. Bailenson has received numerous awards, including the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford and the IEEE Virtual/Augmented Reality Technical Achievement Award in 2020. He has authored over 250 academic papers across multiple disciplines and has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation for over 25 years. His first book, 'Infinite Reality,' co-authored with Jim Blascovich, became an Amazon Best-seller and was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court.…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Engineering
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Machine Learning
• Human–computer interaction
• World Wide Web
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Nonverbal overload: A theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue.

  Technology Mind and Behavior · 2021 · 1111 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  For decades, scholars have predicted that videoconference technology will disrupt the practice of commuting daily to and from work and will change the way people socialize. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic forced a drastic increase in the number of videoconference meetings, and Zoom became the leading software package because it was free, robust, and easy to use. While the software has been an essential tool for productivity, learning, and social interaction, something about being on videoconferen…

  DOI

• Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale

  Computers in Human Behavior Reports · 2021 · 276 citations

  In 2020, video conferencing went from a novelty to a necessity, and usage skyrocketed due to shelter-in-place throughout the world. However, there is a scarcity of academic research on the psychological effects and mechanisms of video conferencing, and scholars need tools to understand this drastically scaled usage. The current paper presents the development and validation of the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale (ZEF Scale). In one qualitative study, we developed a set of interview prompts based…

  DOI

• Nonverbal Mechanisms Predict Zoom Fatigue and Explain Why Women Experience Higher Levels than Men

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 209 citations

  DOI

• Personal identifiability of user tracking data during observation of 360-degree VR video

  Scientific Reports · 2020 · 208 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that is gaining traction in the consumer market. With it comes an unprecedented ability to track body motions. These body motions are diagnostic of personal identity, medical conditions, and mental states. Previous work has focused on the identifiability of body motions in idealized situations in which some action is chosen by the study designer. In contrast, our work tests the identifiability of users under typical VR viewing circumstances, with no specially…

  DOI

• The sense of presence: lessons from virtual reality

  Religion Brain & Behavior · 2021 · 25 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The sense of presence—or the sense of “being there”—is a poorly understood phenomenon, especially in the case of “unseen others,” e.g., God. We used the tools of virtual reality (VR) to explore the effects of active imagination in creating a sense of presence of an ambiguously real other. We found that adding a visual representation was more effective than verbal language alone in evoking a sense of social presence in a ten-minute intervention, that a proclivity for absorption enhanced the sense…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Exploring the Behavioral and Facial Similarities of Humans and their Virtual Representations

  NSF · $109k · 2007–2009

• CHS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Augmented Reality Agents with Pervasive Awareness, Appearance and Abilities

  NSF · $263k · 2018–2022

• Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Environments

  NSF · $760k · 2005–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Anna Carolina Muller Queiroz

  Stanford University

  44 shared

• Mark Roman Miller

  Illinois Institute of Technology

  38 shared

• Jeffrey T. Hancock

  Stanford University

  35 shared

• Eugy Han

  Stanford University

  28 shared

• Jim Blascovich

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  26 shared

• Mar González-Franco

  26 shared

• Marie Trinh

  Utrecht University

  25 shared

• Mehdi Dastani

  Utrecht University

  25 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

  Not provided

Education

• B.A.

  University of Michigan

  1994

• Ph.D., cognitive psychology

  Northwestern University

  1999

Awards & honors

• Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford
• IEEE Virtual/Augmented Reality Technical Achievement Award (…

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Stephen Lubyh-103
• Henry T. (Hank) Greelyh-50
• Pamela Hindsh-46