Comparing virtual reality with computer monitors as rating environments for affective dimensions in social interactions

Virtual Reality technologies present exciting opportunities for increasing the understanding of affect and emotion-related phenomena. However, they remain understudied both from the principles of data gathering and for their prospective use as annotation tools. A 2×2 mixed design experiment assessed the influence of presentation of emotion related social interactions in virtual reality and using more traditional database techniques. Participants rated the interactions along four emotion-related dimensions (empathy, rapport, trust and tone), for conversational “floor” dominance and how they made the raters “feel” on a valence dimension. Forty-three participants watched clips of a recorded conversation. Significant differences were found between the rapport, trust, emotional tone, floor dominance and subjective feeling ratings when comparing emotional valence of the materials; however, there was no effect of presentation medium for any measure-presenting in virtual reality made no difference to a raters annotations when compared to more traditional computer monitor style ratings. Implications for using virtual reality for database creation and annotation are discussed and the value is assessed given the current state of these technologies. We conclude that this does not diminish the need for research in Virtual Reality in Affective Computing but call for caution in the interpretation of results.