From the Interactive Media & Games Seminar Series; Bireswar Laha, from the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University examines how VR leverages immersive hardware components to create an alternate environment for the viewer. This alternate world has 'avatars' (virtual representation of humans), and can produce feedback (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and haptic) to all the five senses, often with a fidelity closely matching that of the real world. The designers of this alternate world has the power to manipulate the appearance and behavior of the avatars, which has implications in eliciting pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors.