Reducing the Fear of Height by inducing the Proteus Effect of a Dragon Avatar

Abstract

Existing studies have reported that the Full Body Ownership Illusion let users perceive a virtual body as our own body. It has also revealed the Proteus Effect that avatars’ appearance could affect user’s behavior, attitude and mental condition by inducing the Full Body Ownership Illusion. While many studies have focused on a humanoid avatar and its psychological effects, a previous study has reported that the Full Body Ownership Transfer can be induced even in the case of an animal avatar. In case of inducing the Full Body Ownership Transfer on an animal avatar, it can be expected to induce the psychological effect different from the one by a human avatar. Hence, this study examines a dragon avatar, which has impression of strong body and flight ability, can reduce the fear of height as the Proteus Effect by the Full Body Ownership Transfer. We carried out an experiment with some scenarios where a subject transformed into a dragon and flied into a height, comparing with operating a human avatar. The results showed that transforming into the dragon avatar can improve subjective score and physiological reaction for the fear of height.