The Effects of Viewing an Uplifting 360-Degree Video on Emotional Well-Being Among Elderly Adults and College Students Under Immersive Virtual Reality and Smartphone Conditions

Abstract

Positive emotions are important for the physical and mental health of elderly adults. Previous research has suggested that the emotion processing mechanisms of elderly adults differ from those of young people. The current study used a mixed-methods approach to explore the emotional impacts of viewing an uplifting 360°v ideos under immersive (using a virtual reality [VR] headset) and nonimmersive (using a smartphone) conditions on elderly populations and young people. In Study 1, we conducted a pre-post treatment betweensubject field experiment (smartphone vs. VR) among 58 seniors (aged 60 years and above) in a community center in Beijing, China. One-on-one semistructured interviews of each participant were conducted after the experiment. In Study 2, we conducted a between-subject laboratory experiment with the same design among college students. The results show that while both VR and smartphone viewing conditions led to a significant positive effect on the self-reported emotions of the college students, only the smartphone viewing condition had a significant impact on the emotional well-being of the elderly participants. For college students, immersive VR had a stronger effect on inducing positive emotions than smartphone, but for elderly people, the smartphone viewing condition was more effective in improving emotional wellbeing than immersive VR. An analysis of the qualitative data from interviewing the elderly participants also revealed a divergence in the acceptance of VR technologies among elderly adults, and the sense of telepresence had both positive and negative effects on the elderly participants' emotions and experiences.

The Role of Recipient Characteristics in Health Video Communication Outcomes: Scoping Review

“…A study by Prieto-Pinto et al [ 68 ] found, by using pupillary dilatation measures, which correlates with autonomous nervous system arousal, that men tend to have a greater emotional reaction after being exposed to maternal and neonatal health video clips. In a study conducted in China that aimed to test video versus virtual reality health communications, Liu et al [ 87 ] found that the young and older population differ in positive emotions after being exposed to communication: the young individuals show a greater emotional response to virtual reality, whereas the older individuals show a greater emotional response to health video communication. Of the 39 included studies, trust, which is a key outcome of health communication, was rarely investigated, with only 3 (8%) of the papers included in this review reporting on trust and only 2 (5%) providing empirical evidence regarding the impact of prior mistrust, age, and education on trust.…”

Do You Feel the Same as I Do? Differences in Virtual Reality Technology Experience and Acceptance Between Elderly Adults and College Students

“…A large amount of research has started to examine the effects of VR in different fields. However, most of these studies have only used student samples, focusing on how young people respond to this new technology and its effects on younger generations (Liu et al, 2020). It is undeniable that young people are a key audience and major users of VR, but since VR has also been widely applied in the medical health area and tourism industry in recent years (Syed-Abdul et al, 2019;Lee and Park, 2020), elderly people could become the main target.…”

“…Immersive VR goggles generate more telepresence than a traditional 2D broadcasting device (Shen et al, 2019), and the influence of telepresence in enhancing consumers' beliefs and attitudes toward brands, products and advertisements has been experimentally confirmed (Coyle and Thorson, 2001;Klein, 2003;Hopkins et al, 2004;Fiore et al, 2005). Nevertheless, most of these studies have focused on how people respond to this new technology and its effects on younger generations, but we do not know whether these effects exist in all age groups (Liu et al, 2020).…”

“…An intra-subject design study revealed significant age-related differences (seniors above 60 years old vs. adults up to 40 years old) across head-mounted display vs. desktop platforms in both assessed performance and user experience after a virtual supermarket shopping task ( Plechatá et al, 2019 ). In terms of emotion effects, an experimental study revealed differences in the processing of positive and negative emotions between age groups (seniors above 60 years old vs. college students) after watching a 360-degree video by a VR headset or an iPhone ( Liu et al, 2020 ). However, studies that directly compare the two age groups (young people vs. elderly people) using the same VR stimuli and that explore whether they process the experience differently were still very few and lack of particulars.…”

A Fuzzy Qualitative Simulation Study of College Student’s Mental Health Status

“…As the theory related to difference equations continues to evolve, scholars have encountered two major difficulties, the first being that the models describing the problem are too complex; as the complexity of the system model increases, one's ability to accurately depict the relevant properties of the model decreases, so that models built for real-world problems have difficulty in perfectly presenting the nature of the problem [1][2][3][4]. e second difficulty relates to the uncertainty caused by the inability to accurately describe the actual situation.…”