The Psychology of Virtual Reality

Virtual realities are, actually, quite old. Humans have not been contenting themselves with the world around them for centuries, but instead have created fantasy universes and alternative realities in their heads. Inside, everyone hides whole worlds that are both invisible and intangible.

But usually, this is not what we mean when we talk about virtual realities. You would rather think of computer games, avatars and VR headsets. What new technology now offers, is not so different from the worlds we can create in our imagination — they are just a way to make them visible, shareable, more immersive and sometimes even touchable.

This, however, changes something profound about the way we experience alternative realities. VR technology comes with fascinating psychological effects. Let’s look at some of them.

Safe spaces to confront fears

Especially when it comes to exposure therapy for phobias, there are already established treatments using virtual reality.

Before this technology was made available, there were basically two ways for confronting patients with their fears, for example, of dogs: Asking them to imagine a dog or bringing a real one. The downside of both possibilities is quite evident: The imaginary dog is totally invisible for the therapist, the real dog, however, might already be too much for someone with a strong phobia.

Virtual reality offers an interesting middle course: The clients can face their fears in an environment that resembles reality and thus, evokes similar feelings in them — but still feels safer than reality. Also, the object of fear can be manipulated at will so that, for instance, the patient can start with facing a small virtual dog before moving on to bigger specimens — and finally the ones made from flesh and blood.

Forgetting the pain in SnowWorld

Virtual realities cannot only be used to alleviate psychological problems but even physical pain. Patients suffering from the agony of burn injuries find relief in immersing themselves in SnowWorld, a simple virtual reality game where they throw snowballs at penguins and snowmen. It distracts them so much from their real life that they sometimes even forget about their pain.

Giving yourself advice as Freud

Virtual realities do not only give you the possibility to be somewhere else but also to be someone else. What few people are aware of: A character you play in virtual reality can even change your behavior in real life. The so called Proteus Effect makes players take on qualities of their avatars: People who play superheroes in virtual reality are more likely to help others in the real world afterwards, those taking on robot-like avatars become less sensitive to pain, incorporating a person of another ethnicity can reduce unconscious prejudices.

Virtual reality can even release potential you have not used before. At the university of Barcelona researchers conducted a fascinating experiment: Using virtual reality headsets, participants entered a room where they were supposed to describe a personal problem. Afterwards, they switched bodies with the avatar that was facing them and gave themselves advice. Some just incorporated a duplicate of themselves. Others were sent into the body of Sigmund Freud. The participants incorporating the Viennese psychotherapist gave themselves much more effective counseling. The illusion of being in the body of Freud, made them already feel that they had more expertise to hand out advice.

Virtual reality gets more real over time

Many of the experiments we have looked at so far were conducted with elaborate technology: virtual reality headsets and motion tracking systems. Probably, you do not have that at home. Anyway: Even if this kind of equipment produces the most spectacular psychological phenomena, the virtual environments on your computer screen also have some interesting powers.

Spanish researchers compared imaginary and virtual spaces and discovered: An imagined place feels real to you in the beginning but loses this quality quickly — while it is the other way around with a virtual space. Even if you just explore it on a simple computer screen, it feels increasingly real to you over time.

This means: Your fantasy is good at inventing things but apparently a lot weaker when it comes to maintaining the images you have come up with. Here, fantasy aided by virtual reality can help making a more lasting impression — for example, for metaphors and Symbols that have evolved within the context of therapy and coaching

You see: Virtual reality is an old field with a lot of new input. And it is definitely going to become even more exciting than it already is.