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Interpersonal distance in immersive virtual environments.

Jeremy N Bailenson1, Jim Blascovich, Andrew C Beall

  • 1University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. bailenson@psych.ucsb.edu

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
|March 17, 2004
PubMed
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Digital immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) allows realistic behavioral experiments. Participants maintained greater distance from virtual agents, especially when they made eye contact or invaded personal space.

Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Virtual Reality

Background:

  • Digital immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) offers ecologically realistic experimental settings with high control for behavioral science.
  • IVET enables the study of interpersonal dynamics, such as personal space, in controlled virtual environments.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate interpersonal distance regulation between humans and virtual humans using IVET.
  • To examine how factors like virtual human behavior (gaze, approach) and identity (avatar vs. agent) influence personal space.

Main Methods:

  • Two studies utilized IVET: Study 1 involved participants traversing a virtual room with a stationary virtual human; Study 2 featured a virtual human approaching participants.
  • Key variables manipulated included participant and virtual human gender, virtual human gaze, and whether the virtual human was perceived as an avatar (human-controlled) or agent (computer-controlled).

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Participants maintained greater interpersonal distance when approaching the front of virtual humans compared to their backs.
  • Increased personal space was afforded to virtual agents exhibiting mutual gaze.
  • Participants distanced themselves most from virtual human agents that invaded their personal space.

Conclusions:

  • IVET is a valuable tool for studying human behavior in controlled, realistic virtual environments.
  • Virtual human characteristics, such as gaze and perceived agency, significantly impact human spatial behavior.
  • Findings highlight the nuanced ways humans interact with and perceive virtual entities in digital immersive environments.