The underwood project: A virtual environment for eliciting ambiguous threat

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Virtual Reality Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Unpredictable environments, whether in timing or location of threats, induce anxiety.
• Ambiguous threat, even without concrete dangers, can evoke a sense of unease.
• Prior research links temporal and spatial uncertainty to anxious psychological responses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore ambiguous threat in virtual environments without concrete dangers.
• To investigate how virtual worlds can elicit a building sense of danger.
• To examine the subjective and cognitive consequences of ambiguous threat experiences.

Main Methods:

• Developed a virtual world integrating psychological research and emotional game design principles.
• Conducted three studies to test the effects of the virtual environment.
• Measured subjective and physiological responses to ambient, ambiguously threatening cues.

Main Results:

• Participants perceived the virtual environment as creepy and unpredictable.
• Subjective and physiological responses correlated with the presentation of ambiguous threat cues.
• Exploratory analyses indicated an influence on memory for the virtual world and its narrative.

Conclusions:

• Naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively generate multifaceted ambiguous threat experiences.
• These experiences have significant subjective and cognitive consequences.
• Virtual environments offer a powerful tool for studying threat perception and emotional responses.