Afraid to Be There? Evaluating the Relation Between Presence, Self-Reported Anxiety, and Heart Rate in a Virtual Public Speaking Task

Abstract

The link between anxiety and presence in a virtual environment (VE) is still a subject of an unresolved debate, with little empirical research to support theoretical claims. Thus, the current study analyzed presence, self-reported anxiety, and a physiological parameter (heart rate [HR]) in a sample of 30 high anxious and 35 low anxious participants. Both groups delivered a 5 minute speech in a virtual lecture hall. Results indicate no mediating influences of presence on group differences in self-reported state anxiety during the speech, but point toward negative correlations between state anxiety and the iGroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) scales "sense of being there" and "realism." Furthermore, HR was found to be unrelated to self-reported presence. Only the IPQ scale "spatial presence" showed a marginally significant influence on group differences in state anxiety. The present results support the assumption that presence and anxiety are logically distinct, meaning that presence does not directly influence the intensity of an emotion felt in a VE. Rather, it constitutes a precondition for an emotion to be at all elicited by a VE. Also, HR has proven to be no adequate substitute measure for presence, since it only assesses anxiety not presence. It may, however, mediate the interplay between trait anxiety and state anxiety. Possible implications of the current findings are discussed alongside the problem of using presence questionnaires that seem to be prone to subjective bias (i.e., participants confusing presence and emotion).

Studying the Mental Effort in Virtual Versus Real Environments

“…number, shape) might have resulted in different outcomes for the analysis. While the main hypothesis was not conclusive, these results extend the findings made in VR studies regarding cognitive and affective states [12,13,18,28]: virtual experiences can induce similar user responses compared to real ones.…”

Is virtual reality emotionally arousing? Investigating five emotion inducing virtual park scenarios

“…Slater, 2004). Following this line of reasoning, presence may be thought of as a precondition for an emotional reaction to occur at all in a VE (Felnhofer, Kothgassner et al, 2014). Thus, it is of no surprise that studies which evaluated VEs as MIPs have also considered presence (e.g., Baños et al, 2004Baños et al, , 2008Riva et al, 2007).…”

“…However, for EDA to be accepted as a corroborative measure of presence, it would need to be correlated with presence (in the sense of convergent validity; c.f. Felnhofer, Kothgassner et al, 2014).…”

“…As presence is thought to be a precondition for an emotion to occur at all in a VE it may be regarded a key factor in VE based mood induction; at the same time, the link between presence and the emotional reaction to a VE -both subjective and objective (i.e., physiological arousal) -is still a subject of conflicting theoretical debate (c.f. Felnhofer, Kothgassner et al, 2014).…”

Virtual Reality Training for Public Speaking—A QUEST-VR Framework Validation

“…However, recent research revealed that the correlation between presence measures and anxiety showed mixed results and differed between phobias (Ling et al, 2014). A recent meta-analysis (Ling et al, 2014) even showed a null-effect for social anxiety [see also Felnhofer et al (2014)]. Ling et al (2014) argue that "one might conclude that subjective presence measures do not capture the essential sense of presence that is responsible for activating fear related to social anxiety in individuals" (p.…”