Exploring The Effectiveness of Mood Induction In Virtual Reality
Abstract
Mood induction procedures (MIPs) are commonly used by researchers who seek to examine affective states and their effects on other outcomes of interest. Despite their popularity, MIPs do not generate the same type of intense and influential emotions that are caused by life events, creating an empirical gap between naturalistic and experimentally manipulated emotion. Researchers have begun exploring the use of virtual reality (VR) to address these flaws, as its engaging and immersive nature could confer higher ecological validity for laboratory-induced emotions. This study compared the effectiveness of fear-elicitation via a VR cinema MIP to that of a standard film clip MIP. The results of a regression analysis found that VR-induced fear was significantly more intense and more longer lasting than non-VR-induced fear, though only when compared against control. However, neither MIP generated fear lasting longer than four minutes post-MIP. This has major implications for researchers who hope to investigate the effect of mood on tasks which outlast the duration of a mood induction. Future research should continue to assess and improve the effectiveness of existing MIPs.