Chapter 8 Social Influence within Immersive Virtual Environments (original) (raw)
Related papers
Coram Populo-In the Presence of People: The Effect of Others in Virtual Worlds
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2013
3D virtual worlds (VWs) enable perception of others' presence and actions. However, it is unclear how this influences behaviors in group tasks. We study the influence of 'perceived colocation' and 'perceived coaction', on cognitive absorption, which in turn predicts participative behaviors. Perceived colocation and coaction are central to social facilitation effects, tested primarily in face-to-face settings. We use distraction-conflict theory to explain how these may occur in VWs. Results from a quasi-experiment in Second Life support our hypotheses. We demonstrate the influence of perceived colocation and coaction and extend the applicability of social facilitation effects by incorporating the concept of cognitive absorption in VWs. We conclude with suggestions for the use of VWs for decision-making tasks.
Springer eBooks, 2022
Classic social influence effects are present both in games and virtual environments, similarly to real life. The use of games and virtual environments to study them offers the possibility to better control the experimental situation but also brings limitations. On one hand, sequential request techniques of social influence are studied in virtual environments, which enables the control of the experimental situation at the laboratory level. On the other hand, mere presence in the laboratory, devices for measuring physiological responses and awareness of participation in the game provide additional confounding variables that influence the results. We show examples of successful and unsuccessful replications of the foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face and foot-in-the-face effects accompanied by the analysis of the indicators of physiological arousal. Virtual environments are useful tools for social psychology, but they need to be applied carefully because even a serious game is sometimes just a game.
Social responses to virtual humans
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '07, 2007
Do human-human social interactions carry over to humanvirtual human social interactions? How does this affect future interface designers? We replicated classical tests of social influence known as the social facilitation and inhibition effects. Social facilitation/inhibition theory states that when in the presence of others, people perform simple tasks better and complex tasks worse. Participants were randomly assigned to perform both simple and complex tasks alone and in the presence of either a real human, a projected virtual human, or a virtual human in a headmounted display. Our results showed participants were inhibited by the presence of others, whether real or virtual. That is, participants performed worse on the complex task, both in terms of percent correct and reaction times, when in the presence of others than when alone. Social facilitation did not occur with the real or virtual human. We discuss these results and their implications for future interface designers.
Avatars Versus Agents: A Meta-Analysis Quantifying the Effect of Agency on Social Influence
2015
Existing research has investigated whether virtual representations perceived to be controlled by humans (i.e., avatars) or those perceived to be controlled by computer algorithms (i.e., agents) are more influential. A meta-analysis (N = 32) examined the model of social influence in virtual environments and investigated whether agents and avatars in virtual environments elicit different levels of social influence. Results indicated that perceived avatars produced stronger responses than perceived agents. Level of immersion (desktop vs. fully immersive), dependent variable type (subjective vs. objective), task type (competitive vs. Jesse Fox, Ph.D. (fox.775@osu.edu, http://commfox.org) is a social scientist with an interest in the effects of virtual environments, social media, video games, and other technologies; she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University and founder of the Virtual Environment, Communication Technology, and Online Research (VECTOR) Lab. Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, Ph.D. (sjahn@uga.edu) is a communication scholar interested in how experiences in virtual environments influence the way people think, feel, and behave in the physical world; she is an Assistant Professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Georgia and the founding director of the Games and Virtual Environments Lab. Joris H. Janssen, Ph.D. (joris.h.janssen@philips.com) is a human-computer interaction researcher with an interest in affective computing and persuasive technology; he is a Research Scientist at Philips Research. Leo Yeykelis (yeyleo@stanford.edu, http://yeyleo.com) is a communication scholar with an interest in quantitative methods and big data at the intersection of media and psychology, with a focus on media multitasking in work and play; he is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. Kathryn Y. Segovia, Ph.D. (kathrynr@stanford.edu) is a design researcher with an interest in how leaders use social influence to facilitate creativity in the workplace; she is an innovation consultant and a lecturer with the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. Jeremy N. Bailenson, Ph.D. (bailenson@stanford.edu, http://vhil.stanford.edu) is a social scientist with an interest in immersive virtual environments; he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University and the founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
The goal of the present review is to explain how immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can be used for the study of social interactions and how the use of virtual humans in immersive virtual environments can advance research and application in many different fields. Researchers studying individual differences in social interactions are typically interested in keeping the behavior and the appearance of the interaction partner constant across participants. With IVET researchers have full control over the interaction partners, can standardize them while still keeping the simulation realistic. Virtual simulations are valid: growing evidence shows that indeed studies conducted with IVET can replicate some well-known findings of social psychology. Moreover, IVET allows researchers to subtly manipulate characteristics of the environment (e.g., visual cues to prime participants) or of the social partner (e.g., his/her race) to investigate their influences on participants' behavior and cognition. Furthermore, manipulations that would be difficult or impossible in real life (e.g., changing participants' height) can be easily obtained with IVET. Beside the advantages for theoretical research, we explore the most recent training and clinical applications of IVET, its integration with other technologies (e.g., social sensing) and future challenges for researchers (e.g., making the communication between virtual humans and participants smoother).
Virtual humans and persuasion: The effects of agency and behavioral realism
Media …, 2007
Two studies examined whether participant attitudes would change toward positions advocated by an ingroup member even if the latter was known to be an embodied agent; that is, a humanlike representation of a computer algorithm. While immersed in a virtual environment, participants listened to a persuasive communication from a digital representation of another student. The latter was actually an embodied agent (a computer-controlled digital representation of a human). Study 1 examined the extent to which gender of the virtual human, participant gender, and the agent's behavior affected attitude change. Results revealed genderbased ingroup favoritism in the form of greater attitude change for same gender virtual humans. Study 2 examined behavioral realism and agency beliefs; that is, whether participants believed the other to be an agent or an avatar (an online representation of an actual person). Results supported Blascovich and colleague's model of social influence within immersive virtual environments. Specifically, the prediction that virtual humans high in behavioral realism would be more influential than those low in behavioral realism was supported, but this effect was moderated by the gender of the virtual human and the research participant. Implications of these findings for the model are discussed.
Social Interaction with Virtual Beings
2009
There is a significant move toward the use of "robot avatars," that is, representations of virtual humans, real or imaginary objects acting as virtual salespeople, on e-tail websites and retail stores in virtual worlds. De Angeli, Lynch, and Johnson (2001, p. 198) characterize avatar representations as "social agents," "intentionally designed to be human-like, to show a sense of personality and attitude, and to involve the user in social relationships." Although robot avatar actions and communication are likely generated from a database rather than a human, there is a stream of international research indicating that human-avatar interactions in e-tailing can induce feelings of trust or liking within users and even influence users' decisions .
Virtual Humans and Social Interaction
Abstract We thought that, virtual reality cannot merely be reduced to a hardware system, another way to achieve the optimal experience, is to produce a sense of immersion associated to an emotional and social experience inside the virtual environment. We believe that Virtual Characters that express a social and emotional behavior in their interaction could produce a sense of immersion in the user that interact with them. We propose to use this kind of character to develop social and emotional interfaces, capable to produce a believable Social Interaction.
Social interaction in virtual environments: Key issues, common themes, and a framework for research
… : Presence and interaction in shared virtual …, 2002
In this chapter, I will give an overview of some central issues in research on shared virtual environments (VEs) -including "presence", "copresence", communication, and small and large group dynamics -across a range of virtual reality (VR) technologies and different conditions under which they are used. I will discuss different studies of the interplay between technological systems and their social implications, and how sociological insights about interaction in the real world can be brought to bear on interaction in VEs. Finally, I will argue that making links between different areas of research can lead to a better understanding of social interaction in VEs.