Simulated thoughts in virtual reality for negotiation training enhance self-efficacy and knowledge

Abstract

Negotiating serves as an essential skill in our daily life, however, it is quite challenging to negotiate well. Various negotiation training systems have been developed to solve this problem and improve people's performance in negotiation. Nevertheless, these systems mainly focus on skills practice and less on negotiation understanding or self-efficacy development. Aiming at improving both people's negotiation knowledge and self-efficacy, a virtual reality negotiation training system is proposed that exposes users to virtual cognitions during negotiating with virtual characters. The virtual cognitions, delivered as a personalised voice-over, provide users with a stream of thoughts that reflects on the negotiation progress and their performance, and also presents self-motivational statements. To study the effectiveness of the system and the self-motivational statements included in virtual cognitions, an empirical study with 48 participants was conducted. The study employed a between-subjects design with three groups: waitlist, training with self-motivational statements, and training without self-motivational statements. 24 waitlist participants were also randomly assigned to and completed the training following the waiting period. The results indicated that 1) the system significantly enhanced people's knowledge about negotiation and increased their self-efficacy, 2) the self-motivational statements included in virtual cognitions even further improved self-efficacy. Furthermore, these effects remained after multiple weeks.

Self-identification with a Virtual Experience and Its Moderating Effect on Self-efficacy and Presence

“…After their experience in virtual reality, they might have realized that giving such lecture is more difficult than what they initially anticipated. This explanation was supported by a recent study conducted by Ding et al (2020) where a passive virtual reality negotiation training with simulated thoughts in firstperson perspective successfully enhanced people's self-efficacy. In that experiment, participants started out with a relative low level of self-efficacy, which increased throughout the training and remained high even after multiple weeks after the training.…”

A Motivational Mechanism Framework for Teachers' Online Informal Learning and Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the creative domain, many empirical studies have found that the environment promotes innovation by improving self-efficacy (Zhang and Zhang, 2012 ; Ma et al, 2013 ; Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015 ). For example, domain-relevant and creativity-relevant skills trainings facilitate self-efficacy (Bruce et al, 2010 ; McDonough et al, 2016 ; Ding et al, 2020 ) or innovative efficacy (Byrge and Tang, 2015 ; Vally et al, 2019 ) and then improve innovation. For students, informal science learning activities such as visiting science venues improve students' scientific performance through scientific self-efficacy (Suter, 2014 ; Tang et al, 2019 ).…”

A new way of teaching business ethics: The evaluation of virtual reality-based learning media

“…Supporting this argument, this research also found that applying virtual reality-based learning media increases the individual's level of ethical efficacy by improving their self-efficacy. This provides empirical evidence that VR enhances ethical efficacy in the field of ethics education, as in the field of training negotiations ( Ding et al, 2020 ), in the field of surgical training ( Francis et al, 2020 ), and in the field of athletic education ( Wang & Hu, 2017 ).…”

“…VR training plays a role to improve mastery and learning experience, self-motivation, and allows users to actively participate in the learning process in a virtual environment, which ultimately increases people's self-efficacy. Ding et al (2020) found that VR-based negotiation training improves self-efficacy. Wang and Hu (2017) found that applying virtual reality to adventure athletic education increased students' self-efficacy and team cohesiveness.…”

“…VR makes it possible to re-create the real world as it is or to create a whole new world, providing experiences that can help people to understand concepts and learn to do certain tasks, where they can be repeated as often as needed and in a safe environment ( Yusoff, Zulkifli, & Mohamed, 2011 ). Examples of the use of VR are for training for surgeons ( Francis, Bernard, Nowak, Daniel, & Bernard, 2020 ), firefighters ( Çakiroglu & Gökoglu, 2019 ), negotiation training ( Ding, Brinkman, & Neerincx, 2020 ), and health care training ( Chow et al, 2017 ). In a VR-based learning environment, the learning experience in skills training is obtained by providing a virtual environment that is similar to real-life situations ( Huang, Rauch, & Liaw, 2010 ; Yusoff et al, 2011 ).…”