Can Virtual Observers Affect Our Behavior? Social Facilitation in Virtual Environments: A Mini-Review

Abstract

The social facilitation effect describes the change in the performance of the task under the influence of the presence of observers. The effect itself consists of two components: social facilitation in simple tasks and social inhibition in complex tasks. In the context of the dynamic development of new technologies, the question of the possible influence on human behavior by virtual characters gains importance. We attempted to critically describe and summarize current research on social facilitation in order to answer the question of whether it occurs in virtual environments. We found 13 relevant studies, 3 of which demonstrated social facilitation, 4 social inhibition and 1 demonstrated the whole effect. The conclusions drawn from the analysis are ambiguous. Firstly, we identified that 12 out of 13 analyzed studies failed to show the whole effect. Secondly, we encountered several shortcomings of the summarized research that further complicated its interpretation. The shortcomings: presence of the researcher, unclear usage of “agent” and “avatar”, evaluation of activation, no pilot tests of observers and no description of how their characteristics are generated, among others, are discussed. Furthermore, we investigated the effect sizes and their variability. The average effect size for social facilitation was g = 0.18, CI [-0.28; 0.64] and for social inhibition g = -0.18, CI [-0.40; 0.04]. In social facilitation, a substantial level of heterogeneity was detected. Finally, we conclude that it is still too early to provide a definite answer to the question of whether social facilitation exists in Virtual Environments. We recommend limiting evaluation activation to the lowest possible level, conducting pilot tests prior to the experiment, avoiding the presence of the researcher in the experimental room and a clear distinction of “agent” and “avatar”, as measures to achieve a better quality in future research.

The observant android: Limited social facilitation and inhibition from a copresent social robot.

“…This investigation expands the latter work by testing for previously validated SFE/SIE mechanisms (i.e., evaluation apprehension, mere effort, and attentional conflict), as well as people's mind perception in robots as an ostensible precondition. Acknowledging mixed findings for digital observers (Sterna et al, 2019) and methodological criticism (Irfan et al, 2018), this study followed suggested procedures for SFE/SIE studies to minimize the influence of confounds (i.e., using a welltested task and a pretested robot, controlling for observer behavior and positioning, isolating the observer's influence) and, in doing so, addressed why previous findings may have been inconsistent. Our findings, overall, indicated no significant differences in SFE/SIE across observer conditions, no significant differences in SFE/SIE mechanisms, and only a single statistically meaningful effect of mind perception (i.e., improved performance corresponding with perceptions of basic agentic capacities).…”

“…Although these findings suggest that SFE/SIE may manifest for robot observers, Irfan et al (2018) advocated against such a conceptual transfer. They argued that (a) people's participation in a study in which researchers (copresent or not) intend to evaluate them defies a clear attribution of any effects to the observing agent and (b) previous studies failed to replicate SFE/SIE with digital agents (e.g., Hertz & Wiese, 2017), alongside (c) general inconsistency in such effects (Sterna et al, 2019). Beyond that general conceptual challenge, we also note that the supportive studies have been subject to methodological limitations.…”

“…In both Cruz-Maya et al (2015) and Wechsung et al (2014), the stimulus robot took a much more active evaluative role that included direct evaluations during task completion. Rather than limiting which psychological mechanisms might be in action, Sterna et al (2019) argued that such direct feedback alters the phenomenon of interest. Given these shortcomings, a proper test of whether robots may induce SFE/SIE must include conditions under which any of those mechanisms may play out.…”

Psychophysiology in Studying VR-Mediated Interactions: Panacea or a Trick? Valuable Applications, Limitations, and Future Directions

“…Third, a specific example of the inability to control for confounders is the lack of pretesting of the stimuli and procedures used in the VR-based social experiments. As Emmerich and Masuch (2016) point out, lack of pretesting is one of the problems connected to the research in VR conducted with virtual characters (for discussion: Sterna et al, 2019). Besides virtual characters, experimental procedures in VR experiments are usually also not pretested, made ad hoc, without the usage of standardized materials or performing pilot tests (with few exceptions, e.g., Garau et al, 2005, p. 107;Zimmer et al, 2019, p. 7-12;Harjunen, 2019, p. 34-48;Niu et al, 2020, p. 060413-3).…”

Moderators of Social Facilitation Effect in Virtual Reality: Co-presence and Realism of Virtual Agents

“…With the development of virtual reality (VR) technologies, researchers have begun to explore the impact of computergenerated agents in virtual environments (VEs) on users in terms of the social facilitation effect. Several studies examining this phenomenon in VR have been published, but according to the recent review their results are not consistent (Sterna et al, 2019). To the best of our knowledge, the full social facilitation and inhibition effect in easy and difficult tasks respectively has been shown only once in VR (Park and Catrambone, 2007).…”