Positive narrativity enhances sense of agency toward a VR avatar

TL;DR

A positive story about a VR avatar increases users' sense of control over it, enhancing the illusion of owning the avatar's body.

Contribution

This study shows that narrative context can modulate embodiment in VR by influencing users' sense of agency.

Findings

Positive narratives significantly enhanced participants' sense of agency toward the VR avatar.

Sense of agency was positively correlated with perceived personal familiarity with the avatar.

Avatar narrativity modulates embodiment experiences in virtual reality.

Abstract

The full-body illusion (FBI) refers to the experience of perceiving a virtual avatar as one’s own body. In virtual reality (VR) environments, inducing the FBI has been shown to modulate users’ bodily experiences and behavior. Previous studies have demonstrated that embodying avatars with specific characteristics can influence users’ actions, largely through the activation of implicit stereotypes. However, few studies have explicitly manipulated users’ impressions of an avatar by introducing narrative context. The present study investigated how avatar narrativity, induced through contextual narratives, affects the FBI. Healthy participants embodied a powerful artificial lifeform avatar in VR after listening to either a positive narrative, in which the avatar used its abilities to protect others, or a negative narrative, in which it misused its power. Participants’ impressions of the avatar and indices of bodily self-consciousness were subsequently assessed. The results showed that positive narratives significantly enhanced the sense of agency (SoA), and that SoA was positively correlated with participants’ perceived personal familiarity with the avatar. These findings suggest that the avatar narrativity can modulate embodiment in VR.

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