Outline of an Empirical Study on the Effects of Emotions on Strategic Behavior in Virtual Emergencies

The applicability of appropriate coping strategies is important in emergencies or traumatic experiences such as car accidents or human violence. In this context, emotion regulation and decision making are relevant. However, research on human reactions to traumatic experiences is very challenging and most existing research uses retrospective assessments of these variables of interest. Thus, we are currently developing and evaluating novel methods to investigate human behavior in cases of emergency. Virtual reality scenarios of emergencies are employed to enable an immersive interactive engagement (e.g., dealing with fire inside a building) based on the modification of Valve's popular Source™ 2007 game engine. This paper presents our ongoing research project, which aims at the empirical investigation of human strategic behavior under the influence of emotions while having to cope with virtual emergencies.

[1]  Albert A. Rizzo,et al.  Evaluation of Justina: A Virtual Patient with PTSD , 2008, IVA.

[2]  M. Slater,et al.  The Use of Virtual Reality in the Study of People's Responses to Violent Incidents , 2009, Front. Behav. Neurosci..

[3]  Mariano Alcañiz Raya,et al.  Affective Interactions Using Virtual Reality: The Link between Presence and Emotions , 2007, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[4]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  EMA: A process model of appraisal dynamics , 2009, Cognitive Systems Research.

[5]  Gregory A. Gahm,et al.  Virtual reality exposure therapy for active duty soldiers. , 2008, Journal of clinical psychology.

[6]  Mel Slater,et al.  Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[7]  Shamus P. Smith,et al.  Rapid prototyping a virtual fire drill environment using computer game technology , 2009 .

[8]  Michael Thornton Wyman.  4 – Half-Life 2 , 2011 .

[9]  N. Seymour.  VR to OR: A Review of the Evidence that Virtual Reality Simulation Improves Operating Room Performance , 2008, World Journal of Surgery.

[10]  Frederick P. Brooks.  What's Real About Virtual Reality? , 1999, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[11]  B. Dunkin,et al.  Surgical simulation: a current review , 2007, Surgical Endoscopy.

[12]  Mel Slater,et al.  A Framework for Immersive Virtual Environments (FIVE): Speculations on the Role of Presence in Virtual Environments , 1997, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[13]  Andrea Gaggioli,et al.  Interreality in Practice: Bridging Virtual and Real Worlds in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorders , 2009, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[14]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  Evaluating a Computational Model of Emotion , 2005, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[15]  Ipke Wachsmuth,et al.  Affective computing with primary and secondary emotions in a virtual human , 2009, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.