A method for generating an illusion of backwards time travel using immersive virtual reality—an exploratory study

Abstract

We introduce a new method, based on immersive virtual reality (IVR), to give people the illusion of having traveled backwards through time to relive a sequence of events in which they can intervene and change history. The participant had played an important part in events with a tragic outcome—deaths of strangers—by having to choose between saving 5 people or 1. We consider whether the ability to go back through time, and intervene, to possibly avoid all deaths, has an impact on how the participant views such moral dilemmas, and also whether this experience leads to a re-evaluation of past unfortunate events in their own lives. We carried out an exploratory study where in the “Time Travel” condition 16 participants relived these events three times, seeing incarnations of their past selves carrying out the actions that they had previously carried out. In a “Repetition” condition another 16 participants replayed the same situation three times, without any notion of time travel. Our results suggest that those in the Time Travel condition did achieve an illusion of “time travel” provided that they also experienced an illusion of presence in the virtual environment, body ownership, and agency over the virtual body that substituted their own. Time travel produced an increase in guilt feelings about the events that had occurred, and an increase in support of utilitarian behavior as the solution to the moral dilemma. Time travel also produced an increase in implicit morality as judged by an implicit association test. The time travel illusion was associated with a reduction of regret associated with bad decisions in their own lives. The results show that when participants have a third action that they can take to solve the moral dilemma (that does not immediately involve choosing between the 1 and the 5) then they tend to take this option, even though it is useless in solving the dilemma, and actually results in the deaths of a greater number.

FIJI: A Framework for the Immersion-Journalism Intersection

“…However, researchers have demonstrated that immersive VR systems can be used to create body ownership illusions, in which "healthy subjects experience an artificial body as if it were their own physical body" (Maselli and Slater, 2013). In other words, users may unconsciously accept an avatar representation of themselves as their own body and respond to events involving their avatar, such as possible harm (González-Franco et al, 2014), uncontrolled movements (Pomes and Slater, 2013), expected social behaviors (Kilteni et al, 2013), and even time travel (Friedman et al, 2014). If immersive technologies can be used to induce such body ownership illusions, particularly time travel, they can clearly be used to place the audience within a news story.…”

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality

“…78,79 A more sophisticated version of this setup was repeated in an HMD-based study (Friedman et al, 2014) concerned with embodiment and time travel, where realistic virtual characters were portrayed. In terms of responses to the dilemma they were similar to the other studies.…”

CyberSightings

“…For example, Friedman et al (Front Psychol 2014; 5:943) described a method based on immersive VR for generating an illusion of having traveled backward through time to relive a sequence of events in which the individual can intervene and change history. 3 The authors consider this question: what if someone could travel back through time to experience a sequence of events and be able to intervene in order to change history? To answer this question, Friedman et al simulated a sequence of events with a tragic outcome (deaths of strangers) in which the participant can virtually travel back to the past and undo actions that originally led to the unfortunate outcome.…”