The Impact of Immersive Visualization on Engagement and Emotions Elicitation

The power of environments to elicit emotions in humans has been widely studied in experimental psychology by using exposure to photographs or real situations. Also, many studies showed the ability of movies and imagery techniques to arouse emotions. To this aim, giant strides have been made with the development of Virtual Reality (VR), currently considered one of the most powerful tools to experimentally investigate the effect of environments on the emotions’ elicitation by human beings. This is attributed to its capacity to provide simulated experiences that induce a sense of being in the real world. Furthermore, the immersive feature of VR, promoting a sense of presence within virtual scenarios, coupled with emotions’ elicitation, has given rise to a clinical-therapeutic application of VR, especially in the treatment of anxiety disorders. This research study, conceived by HOPE (Humanitarian Operators Psychological E-services), aligns with the broader scope of the project to use VR as an effective medium for PTSD treatment of humanitarian operators, employing a specific protocol composed of virtual war and naturalistic scenarios. To this purpose, a sample of 42 participants was used to explore the general research objectives of this study that refer to the validation of four VR natural scenarios and nine VR war scenarios, assessing their impact in emotional states in terms of valence, arousal, control and engagement; as well as evaluating potential differences between natural and war scenarios in the emotional states’ ratings.