Fostering positive emotions through virtual reality: the influence of users’ age and video contents on emotional responses
Abstract
While a growing number of studies have supported Virtual Reality’s (VR) potential to induce positive emotions, fewer studies have examined its effectiveness among healthy elderly users. Additionally, studies reported conflicting results regarding valence and arousal responses in older participants. This may be due in part by the lack of comparison between social and nonsocial video contents on users’ emotional responses. Yet, social video contents are known to induce higher levels of arousal and are relevant for inducing positive emotions. Thus, we aimed at investigating the efficacy of highly immersive VR for inducing positive emotions in elderly adults, by confronting ‘natural’ and ‘social’ video contents. 36 undergraduates (22.2 ± 2.5 y.o) and 21 older adults (71.0 ± 5.8 y.o) were recruited. All participants watched and rated 360° videos of both contents under a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) and on a computer screen, while their skin conductance and heart rate were collected using the Empatica E4 wristband. Overall, the HMD proved to be more efficient than the computer screen presentation for inducing positive emotions, both on subjective and physiological measures. Additionally, elderly users reported higher levels of arousal compared to their younger counterparts. Social video contents elicited higher levels of arousal only when watched under the HMD. This is most apparent for older participants, who exhibited the highest skin conductance for social video contents in the HMD condition. As these findings support VR’s effectiveness for fostering positive emotions in older users, potential applications for a “successful aging” or vulnerable users will be discussed.