Emotions in Virtual Experiences

To this day, emotion still doesn't have a concrete definition. Coming into the topic, I first attempted to define emotion and came up with "a feeling or reaction to a mental experience." If you look it up on Google, you’ll probably find “a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationships with others.” Unfortunately, none of these successfully define the entirety of emotion. To further understand emotions and come to a complete definition, we must look at them from different perspectives, different realities. Therefore, we can look at emotions produced in the virtual world to get a better understanding of the essence of emotions.

Thanks to immersive technologies, we can perceive virtual experiences as realistic and experience myriad emotions in virtual environments. Immersive technologies are split into three categories: non-immersive, semi-immersive, and full-immersive. Non-immersive technologies, the most accessible out of the three categories, include your computer and phone. Semi-immersive technology, not nearly as accessible, includes an IMAX screen or flight simulations. Finally, full-immersive virtual reality, which is becoming increasingly more accessible, includes advanced technological devices such as headsets (Oculus or HTC Vive) and haptic feedback gloves (HaptX or TESLASUIT). Thanks to these advanced immersive technologies, experiences in the virtual world seem more realistic than ever. Therefore, we can ask ourselves the following questions:

• Are our emotions the same in virtual reality as those in our reality?

• Is there some aspect of virtual reality that will always make emotions in different per reality?

• Would a distinction between virtual versus real experience emotions change our perception or ideas of emotion and reality?

To answer these questions, there are a couple of terms we have to define before we get started.

Defining emotions is an incredibly difficult task for philosophers and psychologists, so for me, it's pretty nearly impossible. Therefore, to answer our questions, I used Michel Cabanac’s, a Canadian researcher and philosophical thinker, definition for emotion: “a mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic content” (Cabanac). To analyze an emotion, he used a four-dimensional plane: qualitative, hedonic, intensity, and time. Comparing emotions from each dimension will allow us to see whether there is a distinction to be made between emotions produced in virtual versus real experiences.

This axis regards whether a mental experience is pleasant or not. However, some negative emotions are harder to differentiate such as disgust and sadness. Therefore, the best way of studying this axis is by seeing whether emotions are the same in a real experience and a virtual recreation of the real experience. A study conducted by José Marín-Morales attempted to create a computing system that would accurately detect emotions from virtual experiences. In this experiment, sixty participants were immersed in virtual environments that had intended emotions such as happiness from a lively park and sadness from an abandoned one. The study found that 75% of the time, intended emotions were successfully identified. The system wasn't perfect so the percentage could slightly change with a different system. However, 75% is a high enough number for us to conclude that emotions in virtual experiences can generally be successfully identified so it's possible for emotions, on the hedonic axis, to be identical in a virtual or a real environment.

Phobia therapy, or psychotherapy, is a method of managing a specific phobia through exposure and cognitive behavioral therapy. Exposure therapy is very effective in changing a response to the cause of a phobia, whether that be an object or a situation. Thanks to virtual reality, phobia therapy, and specifically exposure therapy, is replicated in virtual experiences to confront that object or situation. For example, having arachnophobia, experiencing encounters with spiders in the virtual world can help the arachnophobic person to lower their fear. This method of therapy has been very effective and is becoming increasingly used by therapists and psychologists. Therefore, since the intensity level of a phobia-inducing experience can be manipulated in the virtual world, it's logical to conclude that intensity in real experience can be identically replicated in a virtual space.

From here, there hasn't been that great of a distinction between emotions in virtual experience versus those in the real world. Well, Cabanac’s time axis is where all the distinctions can be made. Since this is the time axis, analyzing the time frame of emotion is most logical. Taking the example of phobia therapy from earlier, say you have arachnophobia, well both virtual and real encounters with spiders would scare you. However, if you can recognize that you are in a virtual experience in the virtual encounter, then the duration of the emotion will likely cut short. Therefore, the first distinction we can make is whether the person is aware they are in a virtual experience. If they are unaware, then emotions are the same in the real world. This brings up an interesting question: If we were in a simulation and we became aware of it, would our emotions be any different? I don’t think we have to look at our emotions any different; however, the emotions we had and still have in this reality would be unique to that reality unless we went to the reality conducting the simulation. Taking a step back and looking at an example, suppose you were to fall in love with another user in a virtual experience. If you pursued the connection in the real world and had the same love for the person, then the emotion would be the exact same. We generally see this in movies or television series such as Ready Player One or Sword Art Online. In the instance where you didn't have the same emotion toward the person in the real world, then the emotion you experienced in the virtual world is unique to that reality. Therefore, if we look at the time frame of an emotion, if it extends from one reality to another, then the emotion is identical across realities. Otherwise, the time frame of the emotion is limited to one reality so it cannot be identical to an exact emotion from another reality.

We can sum up by saying that when we recognize we are in a virtual experience or that an experience is limited to the time frame of a virtual world, then our emotions in that virtual experience will always be different from different realities. The idea of recognizing we are in a virtual or simulated experience gives rise to the concept of Simulation Theory. If we were in fact in a simulation, that would mean that our emotions in our reality can be unique to this reality. This brings to mind the question: What would our emotions look like outside of this simulation? Would our emotions continue outside or would we have completely different emotions for very different experiences?