The future of interpersonal skills development: Immersive virtual reality training with virtual humans

We present how immersive virtual reality (IVR) technology can be used for interpersonal skills training in organizations. We review the distinguishing features of IVR and its potential strengths and limitations for interpersonal skills training. There is a pressing need for more empirical evidence, which is why we propose a research agenda with the aim of establishing IVR interpersonal skills training in the domain of human resource development. The proposed research agenda encompasses a set of 10 hypotheses that cover two axes: (a) factors that affect training transfer and (b) personality characteristics. We illustrate how these hypotheses can be tested empirically and discuss limitations and future roles for HRD scholars in such research.