Socially Anxious and Confident Men Interact with a Forward Virtual Woman: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Background Male volunteers entered an immersive virtual reality that depicted a party, where they were approached by a lone virtual woman who initiated a conversation. The goal was to study how socially anxious and socially confident men would react to this event. Interest focused on whether the socially anxious participants would exhibit sustained anxiety during the conversation or whether this would diminish over time, and differ from the responses of the more socially confident men. Methodology The scenario was a party with five virtual characters, four sitting at a distance from the participant and talking amongst themselves and one lone woman standing closer. The woman approached the participant, introduced herself and initiated a conversation that was first about mundane matters and then became more personal and intimate. Participants were men who were either relatively socially confident (18) or socially anxious in their relationships with women (18). A second experimental factor was whether or not the other four characters occasionally looked towards the participant. There was a post-trial questionnaire about social anxiety in relation to the experience, and skin conductance and ECG physiological measures were recorded. Our expectation was that the socially anxious participants would show greater anxiety throughout. Conclusions Compared to baseline readings both socially confident and socially anxious groups on average showed signs of significantly increased stress at the initial approach of the virtual woman. The stress then diminished once the conversation entered into the mundane phase and then did not significantly change. Comparing pre- and post-questionnaire anxiety scores there was no change for the more confident participants but a significant decrease in average score amongst the anxious group. The methodology of placing socially anxious participants in a virtual reality where they can gain experience of how to act in a stressful situation promises a novel way forward for treating social anxiety.

Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape

“…For example, characters in most popular computer games and online worlds (e.g., FIFA game, World of Warcraft) will show some behaviours automatically but other behaviours only when the user hits a key (Figure 2C). In therapies which use VCs (Pan et al ., 2012; Rizzo et al ., 2015), a conversation agent is typically used in which some actions (e.g., gaze, proxemics, gestures, smiles) are pre‐programmed while other aspects of the conversation are controlled by a therapist who listens and watches, then pressing keys on a keyboard to trigger specific events (Figure 2D). Such systems are described as ‘Wizard of Oz’ systems because the behaviour appears to come from the virtual character but is actually driven by a human ‘wizard’.…”

“…They can register the gestures, body motion, and gaze of a user and generate in real time both the verbal and non‐verbal cues required to effectively communicate with the user, giving a startling impression of realism. Some semi‐autonomous agents have been designed to enable therapy for conditions such as phobias (Pan et al ., 2012) and PTSD (Rizzo et al ., 2015; Figure 2D). Such systems typically function with a human therapist acting as the Wizard of Oz, both to monitor the progress of the therapy and to select appropriate behaviours for the VC to show.…”

“…This means the characters and items in the VR world respond to the user as the user interacts with the VR world (rather than just watching a 3D movie). For instance, a situation that triggers plausibility illusion could be when someone entering a virtual bar, a virtual character approaches them and starts a conversation (Pan et al ., 2012). In a typical setup of an experimental study using virtual characters in VR, the strength of the place illusion is often influenced by the VR display technology, whereas the strength of the plausibility illusion is influenced by the animation and interactivity of the virtual characters.…”

Creating Virtual Characters

“…In front of them they could see an audience composed of a small number of animated virtual characters. [14], the London underground [2], the Milgram recreation [16], the virtual bar [11], the socially anxious virtual character [12] and the medical consultation [13].…”

“…In the first of these experiments we produced a very normal and pleasant, though potentially somewhat stressful, social interaction [11]. Male participants were asked to enter a virtual environment that looks like a typical bar with several virtual characters in it and they were approached by a virtual young woman that began to talk to them.…”