Emotion Elicitation Techniques in Virtual Reality

In this paper, we explore how state-of-the-art methods of emotion elicitation can be adapted in virtual reality (VR). We envision that emotion research could be conducted in VR for various benefits, such as switching study conditions and settings on the fly, and conducting studies using stimuli that are not easily accessible in the real world such as to induce fear. To this end, we conducted a user study (N = 39) where we measured how different emotion elicitation methods (audio, video, image, autobiographical memory recall) perform in VR compared to the real world. We found that elicitation methods produce largely comparable results between the virtual and real world, but overall participants experience slightly stronger valence and arousal in VR. Emotions faded over time following the same pattern in both worlds. Our findings are beneficial to researchers and practitioners studying or using emotional user interfaces in VR.