Can virtual reality act as an affective machine? The wild animal embodiment experience and the importance of appearance

10 pages•Published: February 12, 2020

Alexandra Sierra Rativa, Marie Postma and Menno Van Zaanen

Abstract

In view of the growing urgency to protect wildlife, the general goal of our research is to develop an immersive virtual experience where users can step into the ‘shoes’ of wild animals. The specific objective of this research is to explore the possibility of creating a strong emotional connection experience with a virtual animal body. In a game setting, users explore a simulated natural habitat of the animal. At the end of the game, users experience a distress event during which they become the target of an illegal animal hunter. The users receive physical feedback through haptic virtual reality suits (vibrating motors) that mimic the sensation of feeling pain of a hunter's shot. We compare the perceived pain, empathy, immersion, and embodiment experience evoked through a game character with a natural body (beaver), with an artificial body (robot beaver), and an amorphous body. The results of this investigation show a significant effect of game character appearance and perceived pain during the distress event. Moreover, we find a significant effect of game character appearance on immersion. These results suggest that the design of the game character appearance can influence users’ emotional connectedness to the character and the game experience.

Keyphrases: animal conservation, artificial body, beaver, emotions, empathy, game character appearance, immersion, natural body, perceived pain, robot beaver, virtual animal, virtual reality, virtual robot animal

In: Claudia Urrea (editor). Proceedings of the MIT LINC 2019 Conference, vol 3, pages 214-223.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/RFSQ
	https://doi.org/10.29007/dc7s

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{LINC2019:Can_virtual_reality_act,
  author    = {Alexandra Sierra Rativa and Marie Postma and Menno Van Zaanen},
  title     = {Can virtual reality act as an affective machine? The wild animal embodiment experience and the importance of appearance},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the MIT LINC 2019 Conference},
  editor    = {Claudia Urrea},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Education Science},
  volume    = {3},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2516-2306},
  url       = {/publications/paper/RFSQ},
  doi       = {10.29007/dc7s},
  pages     = {214-223},
  year      = {2020}}

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