Authentic Fear Responses in Virtual Reality: A Mobile EEG Study on Affective, Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates of Fear

Abstract

Fear is an evolutionary adaption to a hazardous environment, linked to numerous complex behavioral responses, e.g., the fight-or-flight response, suiting their respective environment. However, for the sake of experimental control, fear is mainly investigated under rather artificial laboratory conditions. The latter transform these evolutionary adaptions into artificial responses, like keystrokes. The immersive, multidimensional character of virtual reality (VR) enables realistic behavioral responses, overcoming aforementioned limitations. To investigate authentic fear responses from a holistic perspective, participants explored either a negative or a neutral VR cave. To promote real-life behavior, we built a physical replica of the cave, providing haptic sensations. Electrophysiological correlates of fear-related approach and avoidance tendencies, i.e., frontal alpha asymmetries (FAA) were evaluated. To our knowledge, this is the first study to simultaneously capture complex behavior and associated electrophysiological correlates under highly immersive conditions. Participants in the negative condition exhibited a broad spectrum of realistic fear behavior and reported intense negative affect as opposed to participants in the neutral condition. Despite these affective and behavioral differences, the groups could not be distinguished based on the FAAs for the greater part of the cave exploration. Taking the specific behavioral responses into account, the obtained FAAs could not be reconciled with well-known FAA models. Consequently, putting laboratory-based models to the test under realistic conditions shows that they may not unrestrictedly predict realistic behavior. As the VR environment facilitated non-mediated and realistic emotional and behavioral responses, our results demonstrate VR’s high potential to increase the ecological validity of scientific findings (video abstract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qROsPOp87l4&feature=youtu.be).

Affective Image Sequence Viewing in Virtual Reality Theater Environment: Frontal Alpha Asymmetry Responses From Mobile EEG

“…This analysis showed that 23 participants were necessary to achieve a power of 0.80. Our group sample size is greater than that of Schöne et al (2016), who displayed images to participants while investigating FAA through EEG, and similar to Kisker et al (2021), who used EEG to investigate FAA during an immersive VR experience. Participants received a 10 United States dollar Amazon gift card as compensation.…”

“…Numerous studies have investigated affective responses to better understand user emotions elicited during various VR experiences. Affective responses in VR have been investigated through self-reported data (Felnhofer et al, 2015;Lin, 2017;Voigt-Antons et al, 2021) as well as physiological data (Kerous et al, 2020;Kisker et al, 2021;Schöne et al, 2021). Self-reported data often examines affect from the perspective of a dimensional model of affect (Poria et al, 2017).…”

“…Indicative of neural processes, electroencephalography (EEG) is often used to investigate correlates of emotional responses in VR environments, such as valence and arousal (Marín-Morales et al, 2020). Several VR studies have examined emotional correlates through the measurement of frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) (Rodrigues et al, 2018;Kisker et al, 2021;Schöne et al, 2021); a score measuring the difference between right and left prefrontal cortical activity (Harmon-Jones and Gable, 2018).…”

“…However, Harmon-Jones and Gable ( 2018) suggest an FAA model based on motivational direction alone, as the negatively valenced emotion of anger is associated with greater relative left frontal cortical activity, while Lacey et al (2020) propose that FAA may instead indicate effortful control of emotions rather than emotions themselves. While multiple models of FAA exist, none have proven to be universally valid (Kisker et al, 2021). Despite the lack of an agreed upon model of FAA, for the purposes of this study, we consider the valence model of affect (Davidson et al, 1990) in order to interpret our results.…”

EEG-Based Identification of Emotional Neural State Evoked by Virtual Environment Interaction

“…To compare responses between conditions, the authors conducted a repeated-measures ANOVA test. Kisker et al [ 16 ] gathered electrophysiological correlates of fear and avoidance tendencies from EEG signals. Subsequently, Shapiro–Wilk tests were used to check the normality of the variables.…”