Human, Virtual Human, Bump! A Preliminary Study on Haptic Feedback

How does haptic feedback during a human-virtual human interaction affect emotional arousal in virtual reality? In this between-subjects study, we compare haptic feedback and no haptic feedback conditions in which a virtual human “bumps” into the participant in order to determine the influence of haptic feedback on emotional arousal, sense of presence, and embodiment in virtual reality, as well as compare self-report measures of emotional arousal to those objectively collected via event-related galvanic skin response (GSR) recordings. We plan to extend the current preliminary study by adding three more conditions as described in the future work section. Participants are students age 18-32 with at least moderate experience in virtual reality. Preliminary results indicate significant differences in presence and embodiment between haptic feedback and no haptic feedback groups. With our small sample size at the current time, GSR does not show significant differences between haptic and no haptic feedback conditions.