Emerging technologies in varied domains: Perspectives and future research directions

As a result of the continuous advances in the field of digital and virtual technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence domains, we are experiencing profound and extremely rapid changes in almost every aspect of our human experience and are discovering new aspects of it as well. This revolution encompasses a variety of fields, including tourism, communication, entertainment, education, and art. In this special issue, “Emerging Technologies and Human Behaviour: Challenges in Artificial Intelligence, Social Robotics, and Virtual Reality in Psychology, Complex Experience and Artistic Domains”, to capture the key consequences of this rapid revolution on human behaviour and experience, we focused on the most salient discoveries in a wide variety of domains. Specifically, articles included in this collection focused on how and to what extent emerging technologies are re-shaping human life now and their potential impact in the near future. This collection of articles explores the impact of virtual reality on our emotions as well as artificial intelligence’s role in art creation, looking at how technological advances are reshaping our lives and presenting new opportunities of human experience. Contributors are from a wide variety of disciplines, as this topic covers different domains. Meta-themes addressed in this collection include the impact of novel robotics, virtual and artificial systems on emotions, attitudes, behaviours and their link with peculiar personality traits. More narrowed topics revolve around the use of technologies such Artificial Intelligence (including in education), Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality for the study of consumer decision-making process; the addiction attitude towards social media; and pre-diagnostic instrument that leverages Explainable Artificial Intelligence to enhance the diagnostic process of autism, among others. We privileged empirical articles and systematic theoretical contributions investigating the link between human experience and emerging technology in a specific domain, thus, offering theoretical and methodological guidelines for further research in the field. In the end we had 19 articles that met these inclusion criteria and that we included in this issue. First, we provide an overview of the most recent discoveries for each domain, and then, we deepened how articles in this issue add to existing literature. Then, we concluded with guidelines for future research in each specific domain and we justify the need for a more interdisciplinary effort across domains.