Abstract:

We are constantly surrounded by and involved in an ever-changing environment. Being involved likely impacts a variety of psychological processes but seems especially crucial in the context of emotions and social interactions. Emotions have been described as enabling the adaptation to changing environments – which implies that a full emotional experience will only unfold if one is part of a personally relevant situation. Similarly, our perception of and reaction to others might be profoundly different depending on whether a potential interaction is possible or not. Yet, those psychological processes are typically researched using impoverished static stimuli, e.g. pictures, that are passively observed. Immersive virtual enviroments allow us to study these phenomena in a more naturalistic way. In this talk, I will show that changes in our (virtual) environment interact with individual differences to shape our emotional response: Not only are our physiological and subjective responses attuned to environmental changes, but also our behavior. In addition, I will also present some recent findings on the effects of social presence – whether the participants believed to interact with another person or not – on social attention. 

About the speaker:

Lea Hildebrandt, University of Wuerzburg