Emotion elicitation and subjective feeling's evaluation in virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) technology is a highly promising tool for research in psychology and affective sciences. This research aimed to explore to what extent full VR elements (3 dimensions and movement) can be compared with elements related to more traditional methods (e.g., photos or videos in 2 dimensions, static or dynamic), in their impact on emotion elicitation. Sixty participants observed twenty-four stimuli (a koala, a frog and a spider) presented in 2 or 3 dimensions and in a static or a dynamic format, twice. Physiological measurements were recorded during the experiment and, participants evaluated their subjective feeling using three tools (twenty participants used an intensity slider; twenty participants used the Geneva emotion wheel and twenty participants used a self-report manikin registering bodily location of feelings). No interactions between animal, dimension and format were found influencing subjective feeling or physiological responses. Some evidence of an effect of format was found through two of the tools used to evaluate subjective feeling (intensity slider and manikin), with dynamic images that tended to induce more intense feelings than static images