Modeling Virtual Humans for Understanding the Mind

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Original Research
06 September 2021
Embodiment in Virtual Reality Intensifies Emotional Responses to Virtual Stimuli
Dominik Gall
3 more and 
Marc Erich Latoschik
Procedure and stimuli. Participants completed the synchronous and the asynchronous condition in a balanced randomized order. In each condition, participants received visuomotor and visuotactile stimulation for 4 min. We stroked the hands of participants with a ball and rotated their hands. In the synchronous condition, the hand and the virtual ball moved synchronously to the real hand and real ball. In the asynchronous condition, the virtual objects moved 5 s delayed. Afterward, participants completed 20 trials in each condition. In each trial, participants saw the virtual hand for 6 s, then an image with the virtual hand for 6 s. Afterward, they completed self-assessment manikin and presence ratings. After completing both conditions, participants answered a questionnaire to assess if the manipulation worked. Placeholder image stimulus by Julie Johnson on Unsplash.

Modulating emotional responses to virtual stimuli is a fundamental goal of many immersive interactive applications. In this study, we leverage the illusion of illusory embodiment and show that owning a virtual body provides means to modulate emotional responses. In a single-factor repeated-measures experiment, we manipulated the degree of illusory embodiment and assessed the emotional responses to virtual stimuli. We presented emotional stimuli in the same environment as the virtual body. Participants experienced higher arousal, dominance, and more intense valence in the high embodiment condition compared to the low embodiment condition. The illusion of embodiment thus intensifies the emotional processing of the virtual environment. This result suggests that artificial bodies can increase the effectiveness of immersive applications psychotherapy, entertainment, computer-mediated social interactions, or health applications.

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