Rubo, Marius; Munsch, Simone (2024). Social stress in an interaction with artificial agents in virtual reality: Effects of ostracism and underlying psychopathology. Computers in human behavior, 153 Elsevier 10.1016/j.chb.2023.107915
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Social stress can emerge from situational as well as dispositional factors. Here we tested in direct juxtaposition how ostracism in a Cyberball game and underlying psychopathology levels both influence subjective and objective stress markers in an interaction with artificial agents in virtual reality (VR) in 80 participants from a student population. Ostracism led to moderately enhanced subjective stress and negative mood but not to alterations on objective markers of stress. By contrast, underlying psychopathology levels were associated with substantially stronger alterations on subjective stress markers and were additionally associated with reduced eye gaze at virtual agents' heads, larger pupil size, larger high-frequency pupil-size variability, higher heart rate and reduced high-frequency heart-rate variability. Effects for social anxiety, general anxiety and depression levels were overall similar with largest effects on objective stress markers linked to general anxiety. These findings contest the suitability of the Cyberball game as a model for real-life ostracism but demonstrate the utility of gaze and physiological data in predicting psychopathology levels during interactions in VR. These findings furthermore highlight the need for data security solutions when using social VR applications where rich data streams are exposed publicly.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Cognitive Psychology, Perception and Methodology |
UniBE Contributor: |
Rubo, Marius |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology |
ISSN: |
0747-5632 |
Publisher: |
Elsevier |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Marius Henrik Rubo |
Date Deposited: |
28 Mar 2024 11:18 |
Last Modified: |
28 Mar 2024 11:26 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1016/j.chb.2023.107915 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/194866 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/194866 |
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