Virtual Reality has been predominately popular in the gaming world however it is not limited to that industry. VR has proven its potential in healthcare, travel, tourism, hospitality, and many more to add on. Recently a study has been conducted to find out how VR helps in personality profiling.
VR has been quite used in psychology research areas such as moral decision making, anxiety, emotional responses. In addition to that, researchers are now using VR to predict a person’s personality when they are exposed to a threat or jeopardy. The participants are asked to walk around 200 meters above a snow valley in the Virtual environment. The height creates a strong sense of fear and distress among the participants.
The participants are left alone at heights and asked to pass the ice blocks to reach the safer side. They tend to increase the precariousness to analyze an individual’s personality. As a result, it is identified the more precariousness more cautious driven the participants are. Virtual Reality has helped to detect an individual’s personality and pinpoint them easily. The participants will be armored with a handheld controller, head-mounted VR displays, and feet sensors. These sensors will allow participants to test the ice blocks to be safer or not.
Some of the ice blocks safe to step in while others are crack blocks which will crack once the user steps in. The color will change accordingly to indicate the danger block. The feet sensor comes in handy to choose the right block. As the participant levels up the no of crack blocks will keep on increasing. In order to make the task arduous, some fake blocks are added to the path. Though it looks identical to the crack blocks the user will fall down once stepped in with both feet. The fake blocks will make participants experience a short virtual fall which will create discomfort to the users.
Participants spend more time while choosing the blocks to step in due to the anticipation of fake and crack blocks. They turn out to be more cautious and meticulous in taking decisions This risk-aversion behavior reciprocates Neuroticism, a higher level of personality trait. Individuals who possess high. This personality was easily identified during VR testing.
Neuroticism people take a longer time to choose the safest ice block, uses one leg to test the blocks, spends more time standing over safe blocks. Hence the experiment used VR to identify Neuroticism which is one of the major personality traits.
