A Systematic Review of Social Presence: Definition, Antecedents, and Implications

Abstract

Social presence, or the feeling of being there with a “real” person, is a crucial component of interactions that take place in virtual reality. This paper reviews the concept, antecedents, and implications of social presence, with a focus on the literature regarding the predictors of social presence. The article begins by exploring the concept of social presence, distinguishing it from two other dimensions of presence—telepresence and self-presence. After establishing the definition of social presence, the article offers a systematic review of 233 separate findings identified from 152 studies that investigate the factors (i.e., immersive qualities, contextual differences, and individual psychological traits) that predict social presence. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of heightened social presence and when it does and does not enhance one's experience in a virtual environment.

Gaze Behavior in Social Fear Conditioning: An Eye-Tracking Study in Virtual Reality

“…We assume that behavioral and attentional processes measures in VR is more related to real-life situations than traditional laboratory paradigms. Moreover, an potential key element assessing reliable and valid physical or gaze behavior in a virtual environment is social presence, the feeling of the participant to interact with another sentient being which involve cognitive and emotional processes (Blascovich et al, 2002;Oh et al, 2018;Felnhofer et al, 2019). Thus, future research on attention and emotion regulation should include a measure of social presence in VR.…”

(Not) alone in the world: Cheating in the presence of a virtual observer

“…Therefore, it is questionable whether static observational cues are strong enough to consistently affect behavior (Fehr and Schneider 2010;Dear et al 2019;Pfattheicher et al 2019;Oda et al 2015;Cai et al 2015). Indeed, evidence indicates that the behavioral, physiological, and neurological responses to the presence of an avatar are more representative for the responses to human presence than are those of other simulated social presences such as videotapes, images or pictorials (Hartmann et al 2010;Oh et al 2018;Pan and Hamilton 2018;Rubo and Gamer 2018;Yaremych and Persky 2019). This offers an important advantage of our VR setting.…”

ConVRgence (VRIC) Virtual Reality International Conference Proceedings

“…Seeing who is talking to whom and how much people are involved all comes natural to us in a face-to-face meetings. With the help of AR/VR, this is now also available in remote meetings (Oh et al, 2018).…”