Can virtual reality trigger awe and actual goose bumps?
Immersive and personalized virtual reality can successfully trigger strong subjective feelings of awe as well as physical goose bumps, especially when users visit personally meaningful places.
Source
Are You Awed Yet? How Virtual Reality Gives Us Awe and Goose Bumps
What they did
To explore this, researchers recruited sixteen college students and local enthusiasts to experience Google Earth VR across four distinct 5-minute virtual settings. The setups included a structured color tour, a virtual visit to Vancouver, climbing Mount Everest, and exploring a personalized location of their own choosing. The researchers recorded real-time physical responses using a custom-built forearm webcam and collected subjective data through post-study questionnaires and interviews.
What they found
About 43.8% of the participants experienced physical goose bumps during their sessions, with 64% of these physical responses occurring during the personalized, self-selected environment. On average, participants rated their subjective feelings of awe at 79.7 out of 100. Subjective awe was significantly higher in those who had physical goose bumps, and participants who reported high feelings of humility also reported closely correlated high feelings of awe.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The study's primary limitation is its very small sample of only sixteen participants, which severely limits the generalizability of the findings and the statistical power to detect subtle personality and gender differences. Additionally, because the order of the four virtual environments was fixed rather than randomized to prevent motion sickness, the researchers cannot rule out order effects, such as participants becoming more comfortable and thus more prone to awe over time. Finally, the use of handheld controllers occasionally disrupted the participants' sense of presence and immersion, highlighting that the technology itself can act as a barrier to experiencing full awe.
Key terms
- Overview Effect
- A state of awe and self-transcendence reported by astronauts when viewing the Earth from space.
- Aesthetic Chills
- Pleasurable, non-thermoregulatory bodily shivering and goose bumps triggered by moving artistic or emotional stimuli.
- Small-Self
- The psychological phenomenon where an individual feels conceptually or physically diminished and less significant in the presence of something vast.
- Immersion
- The technical capability of a system to deliver a vivid, depth-filled, and multisensory virtual experience.
- Presence
- The subjective psychological sensation of actually 'being there' inside a virtual environment.
Flashcards
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Quiz yourself
According to Keltner and Haidt (2003), what are the two core features that define the emotion of awe?
Common questions
Why did most goose bumps occur in the self-selected environment?
During the self-selected phase, participants chose personally meaningful locations, like their hometowns or childhood houses where family lived. This personalization added emotional relevance, which amplified their subjective and physiological experiences of awe.
Does personality determine whether you can experience awe in VR?
Although previous literature suggests that 'Openness to Experience' relates to awe, this study found no significant correlation between personality traits and how much awe or goose bumps participants experienced, though this may be due to the small sample size.
Did gender play a role in how participants responded?
Yes, the study observed a significant difference where female participants had more frequent physiological goose bump occurrences than male participants, matching some previous research on aesthetic chills.
Why wasn't the order of the VR experiences randomized?
In pilot testing, participants who started with highly interactive environments struggled with the controls and reported motion sickness. The fixed order helped ease them into the technology, though it leaves open the possibility of order effects.
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