Citation

Portnoy DB, Smoak ND, Marsh KL. Virtual Real. 2010; 14(1): 67-76.

Affiliation

Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA; National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10055-009-0120-7

PMID

20228871

PMCID

PMC2835165

Abstract

Using virtual reality (VR) to examine risky behavior that is mediated by interpersonal contact, such as agreeing to have sex, drink, or smoke with someone, offers particular promise and challenges. Social contextual stimuli that might trigger impulsive responses can be carefully controlled in virtual environments (VE), and yet manipulations of risk might be implausible to participants if they do not feel sufficiently immersed in the environment. The current study examined whether individuals can display adequate evidence of presence in a VE that involved potential interpersonally-induced risk: meeting a potential dating partner. Results offered some evidence for the potential of VR for the study of such interpersonal risk situations. Participants' reaction to the scenario and risk-associated responses to the situation suggested that the embodied nature of virtual reality override the reality of the risk's impossibility, allowing participants to experience adequate situational embedding, or presence.

Language: en