Personality and Presence in Virtual Reality: Does Their Relationship Depend on the Used Presence Measure? by Silvia Ericka Kober and Christa Neuper (2013)
The aim of this study was to research and survey the relationship between participants, their personality variables and the reaction to virtual spaces. Significant co-relations to were made between presence and personality based on the presence measure. Personality variables like impulsive tendencies, empathy, locus of control showed similar positive relations to presence and absorbstion. Mental imagination, perspective taking and immersive tendencies showed significant impact on the presence of participants and feeling of “being there”.
The reading explains the term presence as the feeling and/or perception of experiencing a space or “being there”. In the reading they explain that although VR is a hugely useful tool for the presence in virtual spaces, a lot of the result of realism is backed by screen size, motion speed, sterioscopic technology and the realistic and detailed design. This explains that in virtual spaces where the image motion is too fast or unrealistic the participant is likely to peruse the space as augmented and be less immersed and more distracted by the idea of the virtuality of the space. They agreed that through this research they found that both user-related and technology-related factors impacted the result of the immersion of the participant. They explain that because the technology at the moment is not individualised to each different participant the reactions were more differing.
In this study they looked at the co-realations between the personality traits; absorption, imagination, locus of control, impulsive tendencies, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscietiousness.
Absorbtion : the tendency of having episodes of total attention that fully engages one resectional resources. Absorption is highly relation to ones hypnotic susceptibility.
Imagination : Mental imagination is the general ability to imagine in a variety of sensory modalities in the absence of actual presentation of these senses being impacted.
Immersive Tendencies : This is ones tendency to become immersed in media or stories that are outside of their own situation such as novels, tv, computer games and VR
Empathy : Empathy is associated with a persons responsibility of experiences of another. They are more able to see perspectives from another point of view. They are more susceptible to immersion in VR because they already have the tools to become apart of the experience of other peoples environments.
Locus of Control : This refers to the extent which people believe that the actions around them are caused by their own behaviour and actions. This supports the idea that those who feel like they are not in control of what impacts them are likely yo experience a strong sense of presence in VR.
Impulsive tendences : This is related to the lack of planning and action out of whim of people.
Method: questionnaire of 30 females (18-33) who had all had experience in 3D computer games. The intention of this was to have participants of similar experience in VR to heighten the result relying on a persons character traits.
The virtual enviroment was spatial model of Graz University of Technology. After the experience they were asked to fill out 3 questionaries on the result of immersion they felt in the space.
Most relevant result:
The Saarbrucken Personality Questionarie is the German version of the Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index that measures empathy. The SPF contains four sub scales: the fantasy sub scale, which measures the respondents tendency to to identify with fiticious characters: the perspective taking sub scale which which assesses the tendency to adopt the perspective or point of view of others; the Empathetic sub scale, which represents the tendency to feel warmth, sympathy, concern and compassion for others and the Persons Distress sub scale which icates the amount of discomfort and anxiety when the respondent is witnessing negative experiences.
In the study; absorption showed the highest co-relation between immersivity in a virtual environment. They would positive co-relations between absorption and presence. Of all the presence measures that they studied they found that aborption; linked to the amount of focus that can be acquired to a certain part of ones consciousness. This differs from where the real physical space is at the forefront of ones focus.
With the relationship to empathic personality traits and presence; they found positive results in correlation with results at
Empathic concern = .34
Fantasy = .64
Personal Distress = -.18
Perspective Taking = .47
I would think that the lack of personal distress of the situation that was presented was because the lack of distress in the scenario as it was really a journey around a physical space. I can not confirm that this was the actual case though.
Kober, Silvia Erika, and Christa Neuper. “Personality and Presence in Virtual Reality: Does Their Relationship Depend on the Used Presence Measure?” International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction29, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2012.668131.
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