Association of the Big Five Personality Traits with Training Effectiveness, Sense of Presence, and Cybersickness in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) presents numerous opportunities for training skills and abilities through the technology’s capacity to simulate realistic training scenarios and environments. This can be seen in how newer research has emphasized how VR can be used for creating adaptable training scenarios. Nevertheless, a limited number of studies have examined how personality traits can influence the training effectiveness of participants within VR. To assess individual preferences in a virtual environment, the current study examines the associations of Big Five personality traits with training effectiveness from VR, as well as sense of presence and cybersickness. Our results show that traits of high agreeableness and low conscientiousness are predictors of training transferability in the VR environment in relation to the real world. Furthermore, the results also showed that trainees experiencing higher levels of cybersickness incurred worse training outcomes.

Comparative analysis of spatial ability in immersive and non-immersive virtual reality: the role of sense of presence, simulation sickness and cognitive load

“…The analyses showed SS to impact spatial ability significantly negatively in the IVR condition group (β = −.52, p = .011) but not a significant effect in the non-immersive setting (p = .084). This aligns with previous studies finding that SS hinders individuals' ability to interact, perform, and learn in a VE (see Thorp et al, 2023). Additionally, the result is following several studies that found higher levels of immersion to be associated with higher SS (Polcar and Horejsi, 2015;Kwok et al, 2018;Martirosov et al, 2022).…”

“…The participants in the IVR condition (N = 32, 18 males, 14 females) were 22.91 years on average (SD = 1.57). The SoP score (5.23) for the IVR condition was generally in line with similar studies (Weech et al, 2019;Thorp et al, 2023), and the SS was generally in line with most VR studies (e.g., Somrak et al, 2019, which reports scores ranging from 45.95 to 56.41 for different HMD models). CL scores (M = 8.29) were similar to the 2D condition (M = 8.31), contradicting previous studies finding CL to be higher in IVR (Makransky et al, 2019;Breves and Stein, 2023).…”

“…Previous research has reported SS symptoms to be significantly lower or even non-existent in non-immersive VR compared to using an HMD (see Agić and Mandić, 2021). Several studies have found symptoms of SS to decrease learning, training transferability, and general performance in a VE (Mittelstaedt et al, 2019;Thorp, 2021;Agić and Mandić, 2021;Thorp et al, 2023). Adverse SS symptoms can even negatively impact users' ability to complete VR training, with Brooks (2010) reporting that 17% quit a driving simulation task before completion.…”

“…SoP is not to be confused with the device's objective technical attributes, as the technology's quantifiable factors are called "immersion" (Slater, 2003). In contrast to SS and CL, a high SoP has generally been found to enhance performance in IVR (e.g., Stevens and Kincaid, 2015;Grassini et al, 2020;Thorp et al, 2023). However, some conflicting evidence has been found for the role of presence in promoting performance, i.e., the aforementioned study Makransky et al (2019) found that increased immersion promotes presence but hinders trainees' performance.…”

Predicting Perceived Realism in Virtual Reality Driving Simulations Using Participants’ Personality Traits, Heart Rate Changes, and Risk Preference

“…Second, various previous studies have shown that individual personality traits are another possible factor affecting perceived realism in VR. For instance, personality traits such as anxiety [13], introversion, [31] agreeableness, and conscientiousness [32] have been shown to be associated with a sense of presence in VR. However, in this study, we did not select the personality questionnaires typically used in other VR studies.…”