Virtual spaces can serve a variety of research and educational goals and may be useful for examining human behavior. Offline- and virtual-world personalities differ from each other but are nevertheless significantly related which has a number of implications for self-verification, self-enhancement and other personality theories. Panic and agoraphobia have also been studied in a virtual world.
Given the large engagement, especially of young children in virtual worlds, there has been a steady growth in research studies involving the social, educational and even emotional impact of virtual worlds on children.