The Responses of People to Virtual Humans in an Immersive Virtual Environment

Garau, Maia; Slater, Mel; Pertaub, David-Paul; Razzaque, Sharif

doi:10.1162/1054746053890242

Cited by 164 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Users are inclined to feel empathetic with animated virtual characters (Morrison & Ziemke, 2005) and tend to feel as though they are in a social situation when a computer-animated character is displayed (Garau, Slater, Pertaub, & Razzaque, 2005). Likewise, studies show that characteristics of other virtual characters, such as gender (Guadagno, Blascovich, Bailenson, & McCall, 2007), or aspects of the interpersonal RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 6 virtual setting, such as interpersonal distance (Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall, & Loomis, 2003), influence the way users perceive and interact with these characters socially.…”

Section: Different From Playing Chess: the Moral Significance Of Virtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Hartmann¹,

Toz²,

Brandon³

2010

Media Psychology

111

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Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as "it is just a game". However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two experiments (N 1 = 49, N 2 = 80) examined users' guilt responses in order to explore the moral significance of virtual violence. In both studies, justification of virtual violence and users' trait empathy determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real-world scenarios: people felt guiltier if they engaged in unjustified virtual violence, especially if they were empathetic players. These results show that video games are capable of inducing affective moral responses in users. Accordingly, virtual violence may be considered morally significant action.Keywords: violence, video games, guilt, empathy, justification, morality (Bartle, 2008).Virtual violence may be defined as any behavior intended to do harm to another video game character, who is motivated to avoid the harm-doing (Anderson et al., 2008;Baron & Richardson, 1994). Shooting virtual characters for example, in first-person shooter video games, provides a typical example of virtual violence. While many studies have shown that virtual violence depicted in video games increases aggression in users (Anderson et al., 2010), surprisingly little is known about how users perceive and experience virtual violence themselves (e.g., Scharrer & Leone, 2006, Young & Whitty, 2010.Violent video games are designed for entertainment purposes. Consequently, regular violent game players do not typically feel as though they are doing something wrong when they shoot virtual characters. A frequent argument put forward by avid gamers is that they are well aware that the violence depicted in video games "is not real" (Ladas, 2002). For example, Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Vorderer, and Hartmann (2006, see also Whitty, Young, & Goodings, in press) asked avid gamers how they experience virtual violence personally. The majority of players replied that they enjoyed virtual violence as they believe that shooting virtual characters is "just a game" (comparable to chess) and has "nothing to do with killing". This suggests that players maintain a psychologically detached and unaffected stance when playing violent games and that virtual violence is too artificial to be considered morally significant and thus trigger any moral response in the user.RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 2 However, Klimmt et al.'s (2006) study suggests that users may also perceive and judge virtual violence in a moral way. In their study, a number of players indicated that they would find it disturbing if they accidentally shot a child, for example, or if painful injuries were depicted in the video game. Related discussion of "inappropriate" virtual violence also exists in the video game community. Many video game-related online blogs and forums recently featured heated debate regarding a mission included in the popular online-role-playing game "...

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Section: Different From Playing Chess: the Moral Significance Of Virtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Hartmann¹,

Toz²,

Brandon³

2010

Media Psychology

111

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“…It has been shown that virtual human appearance and behavior can impact measures of social presence in immersive environments [1,38], as well as influence user behavior and perceptions of personal contact during the experience [11]. Further, within educational contexts, Kim and Baylor have found that the use, gender and appearance of virtual humans can affect student attitudes about math and hard science disciplines [18].…”

Section: Virtual Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The virtual reality and human factors communities use the notion of presence to describe users' perception of transportation into a virtual environment [11,16,28,36,42]. This definition also points to presence as a useful construct for describing the types of experiences audiences report when feeling transported into a story.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of empathetic virtual characters on presence in narrative-centered learning environments

McQuiggan

Rowe

Lester

2008

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role that narrative can play in learning. With the emergence of narrative-centered learning environments that engage students by drawing them into rich interactions with compelling characters, we have begun to see the significant potential offered by immersive story-based learning experiences. In this paper we describe two studies that investigate the impact of empathetic characters on student perceptions of presence. A study was initially conducted with middle school students, and was then replicated with high school students. The results indicate that, for both populations, employing empathetic characters in narrativecentered learning environments significantly increases student perceptions of presence. The studies also reveal that empathetic characters contribute to a heightened sense of student involvement and control in learning situations.

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“…People will respond to virtual humans in a more realistic way when those virtual humans respond to them more realistically (Garau, Slater, Pertaub & Razzaque, 2005). The sense is that the technology still has a ways to go before people will respond to virtual humans in the same way but this may change as people have more experience with immersive environments.…”

Section: Virtual Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It's not that training systems don't exist but that they could be vastly improved (see results from Tromp et al, 2003). The issues are different if the training system is supposed to supply the other team members (virtual humans; see Garau et al, 2005) or whether all the real human team members will be represented in the virtual environment for training. This last possibility would allow for distance team training in a virtual environment.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Relationship Between Distributed Training, Integrated Learning Environments, and Immersive Training Environments

Lee¹

2007

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The Responses of People to Virtual Humans in an Immersive Virtual Environment

Cited by 164 publications

References 17 publications

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

The effects of empathetic virtual characters on presence in narrative-centered learning environments

Exploring the Relationship Between Distributed Training, Integrated Learning Environments, and Immersive Training Environments

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