CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

Volume 00, Number 00, 2019

ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2018.0393

When Virtual Feels Real:

Comparing Emotional Responses and Presence
in Virtual and Natural Environments

Alice Chirico, MS,1 and Andrea Gaggioli, MS, PhD1,2

Abstract
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Although virtual reality (VR) is increasingly regarded as an effective emotion induction technique, little
research has examined whether and how emotions elicited in VR differ from those evoked in real life. To
address this question, 50 participants (25 females and 25 males) were exposed to either a real-life contemplative
scenario (a panoramic view of a lake) or to an immersive 360 footage of the same landscape. Next, type and
valence of emotions, as well as sense of presence reported by participants, were compared across conditions.
Findings showed that emotions elicited by virtual and natural conditions were not significantly different. The
only exception was anger, which was significantly higher in the natural condition, and amusement, which was
significantly higher in the virtual condition. Sense of physical presence and engagement dimensions of presence
did not significantly differ between virtual and real conditions. However, different correlation patterns between
emotions and key dimensions of presence were found after in vivo and in virtuo exposure. These findings
provide initial evidence that emotions and sense of presence elicited by immersive videos are comparable with
those evoked by real-life scenarios and warrant further investigations.

Keywords: virtual reality, immersive video, emotion-induction, affect, presence

Introduction emotion. They found that the level of involvement in a VR

experience in terms of presence and emotion is more

I s a real-life sunset more emotionally engaging than a

virtual sunset? Intuitively, the answer is obvious: gazing at
a natural sunset should elicit more intense emotional re-
sponses than its virtual counterpart. However, to the best of
our knowledge, no research work has directly compared
emotions felt by people in real and virtual environments.
Virtual reality (VR) scholars have identified a fundamental
construct to assess how much virtual experiences feel au-
thentic. This is the feeling of presence, defined as the extent
to which virtuality of the experience is unnoticed1(p32) or as
the perceptual illusion of nonmediation.2 Previous research
has indicated that presence is related to the level of emo-
tions. Riva et al.3 found that a neutral VR environment in-
duced significantly lower levels of presence compared with
emotional ones. Moreover, they demonstrated that higher
levels of presence were associated with (and predicted by)
more intense emotional states. Diemer et al.4 reviewed the
literature on fear in VR to identify the relative contribution
of perception and conceptual information in shaping this
strongly influenced by emotional factors than by techno-
logical attributes of the VR system (i.e., the effect of im-
mersion). In other words, even a low-immersive system may
induce high levels of presence if the VR scenario engages
emotions. Chirico et al.5 investigated the relationship be-
tween the complex emotion of awe induced by VR and the
sense of presence. They found a positive correlation be-
tween awe intensity and presence (i.e., physical presence,
ecological validity, and engagement). Overall, these studies
evidenced a positive correlation between emotions and
presence in virtual environments. If a virtual experience is a
reliable model of a real-world experience, one should ex-
pect that the relationship between presence and emotions
observed in VR holds in physical environments. However,
limited empirical research has been carried out to test this
assumption. To our best knowledge, the few studies that
have addressed this issue have compared the effectiveness
of in vivo and in virtuo therapeutic interventions for specific
emotions (e.g., Morina et al.6 and Rothbaum et al.7), but

1
Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Milan, Italy.
2
Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.

1
 2 CHIRICO AND GAGGIOLI
very little research has been done outside the clinical do-
main regarding a wider array of emotions and affects. The
present study adds to this literature by comparing emotions
and presence evoked by natural and virtual environments.
Participants were either exposed to a lake panorama or to an
immersive video of the same scenario. We focused on this
comparison since nature is a renowned elicitor of emotional
states.8,9 After experiencing the scenario, participants filled
questionnaires aimed at assessing presence and the type,
quality, and intensity of emotions generated by exposure to
in vivo and in virtuo conditions.
Methods
Sample and participant selection
The sample consisted of 50 adults (25 females) from the
Lombardy region of Italy who voluntarily took part in the
research. The sample was young (males: age mean = 23.68;
standard deviation [SD] = 3.485; females: age mean = 23.88;
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SD = 2.556) with an average number of years of education of
16.36 (SD = 2.431). Participants who (at the time of the ex-
periment) reported vestibular and/or balance disorders were
excluded. The experimental protocol was approved by the
Ethics Committee of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
before data collection. Each participant provided written in-
formed consent for study participation. The whole procedure
was carried out in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration.
Materials and procedures
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two
following conditions:
(a) Real condition (in vivo exposure): participants in the
natural condition watched a real panoramic view of
Lake Iseo and Isola mountain placed between the
provinces of Bergamo and Brescia.
(b) Virtual condition (in virtuo exposure): participants in
this condition watched the same panorama through an
ad hoc 360 video created by means of Ricoh Theta S
and using the ShotCut video-editing free online tool.
Perspectives on Lake Iseo (i.e., height and width) and
weather conditions were the same in both conditions.
After signing consent and completing demographics,
participants were required to sit on a chair and report the
extent to which they lived eight discrete emotions (i.e., an-
ger, awe, amusement, disgust, fear, pride, sadness, and joy)5
on a seven-point Likert scale drawing from literature on
nature and emotions in real and virtual spaces,5,8,10–12 as well
as positive and negative affects (i.e., general dimensions
describing affective experience), through the positive and
negative affective schedule13 to control for pre-experimental
affective states. Then, participants were required to relax on
the chair for 2 minutes, after which they reported their level
of relaxation on a five-point Likert scale (1 = not at all;
5 = completely). Then, participants in the real condition were
required to stand up in the same place where the 360 video
of the panorama was recorded. They were required to stand
still for 5 minutes, watching the panorama and surroundings.
Participants in the virtual condition underwent the same
procedure. After they had stood up, they put on a VR head-
mounted display (Gear VR) combined with a smartphone
(i.e., Galaxy Note 4), and they were provided with standard-
ized instructions on how to start the video (5-minute length)
using this VR device (see instructions and more details on the
procedure in the study by Chirico et al.12). After exposure to
the natural versus virtual panorama, participants rated once
again the extent to which they experienced eight emotions
(i.e., anger, awe, amusement, disgust, fear, pride, sadness, and
joy on a seven-point Likert scale), their general affect (PA-
NAS13), and their sense of presence, through the ITC-Sense of
Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI).14 ITC-SOPI is a 36-item
questionnaire assessing four dimensions of the sense of pres-
ence (i.e., sense of physical presence; engagement; ecological
validity; and negative effects) on a five-point Likert scale
(1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly disagree).
Results
Preliminary data analysis
Participants reported feeling moderately relaxed (mean
2.96; SD = 0.832) and calm (mean = 3.06; SD = 0.890) and
very little nervousness (mean = 1.54; SD = 0.838) before
stimulus exposure. An inspection of skewness and kurtosis
values was realized to determine if variables were normally
distributed. This condition was satisfied for most variables,
thus we carried out parametric statistics. Only anger, fear,
disgust, sadness, and negative affect after the exposure were
not normally distributed. Therefore, we carried out non-
parametric analyses for these variables.
Emotions induced in vivo and in virtuo
A Mann-Whitney test comparing the intensity of anger,
fear, disgust, and sadness in both conditions (i.e., real and
virtual) indicated that only anger (U = -3.124; p = 0.002;
r = 0.441) was significantly higher in the real condition
(median [Mdn] = 2) compared with the virtual one (Mdn = 1).
We carried out four mixed analysis of variance tests (AN-
OVAs), 2 · 2 (condition: VR vs. reality · time: pre-exposure vs.
postexposure), for each of the other discrete emotions (awe,
amusement, pride, and joy). There was a significant main effect
of time concerning awe [F(1, 1) = 96.31 p < 0.01; g2 = 0.667)],
which significantly increased after exposure to the emotional
content (both in virtuo and in vivo). With regard to amusement,
a significant interaction effect emerged (media · time) [F(1,
1) = 11.294 p < 0.01; g2 = 0.190]: amusement significantly in-
creased after exposure to the virtual condition, while it de-
creased after exposure to the natural condition. We conducted a
mixed ANOVA also on the positive affect variable and another
Mann-Whitney test regarding the negative affect. No significant
differences emerged.
Finally, an independent samples t-test was carried out to
look for significant differences between in vivo and in virtuo
exposure regarding each dimension of the sense of presence
(i.e., sense of physical presence; engagement; ecological
validity; and negative effects). Results showed that eco-
logical validity was significantly higher in the in vivo ex-
posure compared with the virtual condition [t(43) = 3.427;
p = 0.001; d = 0.9]. Negative effects were significantly
higher in the virtual condition compared with the natural
one [t(39) = -2.68; p = 0.01; d = 0.7]. Feeling of engagement
[t(42) = -2.007; p = 0.051; d = 0.2] and sense of physical
presence [t(43) = -0.778; p = 0.441; d = 0.2] emerged as not
 WHEN VIRTUAL FEELS REAL 3

significantly different between the two conditions. All de-
scriptive statistics for each variable in both conditions are
presented in Tables 1 and 2.
Sense of presence and emotions
To test the relationship between presence and emotions,
we carried out Spearman rho correlational analyses between
sense of presence dimensions and emotions (discrete emo-
tions and general positive vs. negative affects) separately for
each condition (i.e., real and virtual) (Tables 3 and 4).
Effect of novelty of the medium
To test whether previous experiences or knowledge about
VR could act as an intervenient variable to explain the ab-
sence of significant differences, we included this variable
also in the model. We carried out factorial ANOVAs for each
of the normally distributed target variables (i.e., emotions;
positive affect; and sense of presence dimension); 2 · 2
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spective, and participants’ possibility of moving inside the
scene. Results showed that immediately before exposure to
the natural condition, participants were slightly more relaxed
than participants in the VR condition. This can be explained
by the intrinsic relaxing potential of nature, which has been
demonstrated by several studies.15–17
However, the two conditions did not differ significantly in
terms of intensity, regarding some key dimensions of pres-
ence (i.e., sense of physical presence and engagement), and
regarding their general ability to convey affect (i.e., positive
and negative) as well as discrete emotional states (anger,
awe, amusement, disgust, fear, pride, sadness, and joy). The
only exception was anger, which was significantly higher in
the natural condition, even though it achieved very low
scores. Anger is usually conceived as arising from hin-
drances interposed between people’s movements and a de-
sired goal.18–20 Thus, is has been suggested that approach
tendencies underlie anger responses.21 It follows that this
emotional response would be lower when the desired goal is

(condition: VR vs. reality · previous experience with VR:
present vs. absent). With regard to ecological validity—
sense of presence dimension—we found a small but signifi-
cant interaction effect of condition with previous experience
[F(1, 1) = 4.245; p < 0.005; g2 = 0.084]: participants without
previous experience with VR reported significantly higher
levels of ecological validity in the natural condition (mean =
4.6; SD = 0.202) compared with the virtual one (mean = 3.51;
SD = 0.188). Participants with previous knowledge of VR
reported similar levels of ecological validity in natural
(mean = 4.33; SD = .211) and virtual conditions (mean = 4.1;
SD = 0.231). No other significant interaction effects emerged
regarding other variables.
Discussion
This is the first study that compared affect, emotions
(at dimensional and discrete levels), and sense of presence in
in vivo versus in virtuo exposure. We chose a natural land-
scape to maximize the probability to elicit both positive and
negative affects and emotions.8,9 The two conditions were
comparable regarding the displayed natural content, per-
closer. In this study, participants in the virtual condition may
have felt closer to nature (here, the desired object) compared
with those in the in vivo condition, as suggested also by the
(even not significantly) higher scores of the sense of physical
presence in the virtual condition, compared with the natural
one. Moreover, consistently with literature on affect and
nature exposure,10 anger decreased after exposure to both
environments. Curiously, anger decreased more in the in
virtuo condition. In addition, amusement significantly in-
creased after exposure to the in virtuo content, while it de-
creased after exposure to the in vivo emotional content. This
is line with findings that VR can facilitate sympathetic ac-
tivation (e.g., Chirico et al.12), thus paving the way for ac-
tivating emotions such as amusement (e.g., Gross and
Levenson22). In line with this, sadness—usually a deacti-
vating emotion23—significantly decreased after exposure to
the virtual condition, and not after the natural condition.
Moreover, disgust also significantly decreased after exposure
to both in vivo and in virtuo conditions, even though the
average score was always low. This is in line with the sig-
nificant general decrease of negative affect after exposure to
both environments, reflecting the beneficial effect of nature

Table 1. Pride, Amusement, Joy, Awe, Positive Affect, Physical Presence, Engagement,
Ecological Validity, and Negative Effects Descriptive Statistics and t-Test Comparison
in Real and Virtual conditions
Pre-experimental Natural condition Virtual condition Pre vs. natural Pre vs. virtual
Measure M SD M SD M SD t p t p
Pride 2.90 1.821 2.92 1.778 1.96 1.306 -1.525 0.143 1.305 0.204
Amusement 3.74 1.664 3.60 1.871 4.44 1.609 -1.346 0.191 -3.612 0.001
Joy 3.86 1.591 4.52 1.558 4.00 1.528 -0.622 0.540 -1.604 0.122
Awe 2.68 1.544 5.28 1.646 5.00 1.683 -6.535 <0.001 27.333 <0.001
Positive affect 3.114 0.6773 3.43 0.511 3.03 0.845 -0.695 0.493 -1.604 0.122
Physical presence — — 2.91 0.745 3.11 1.045 — — — —
Engagement — — 3.471 0.638 3.286 0.938 — — — —
Ecological validity — — 4.472 0.607 3.774 0.871 — — — —
Negative effects — — 1.353 0.331 1.706 0.567 — — — —
Note: n = 50. Emotions, presence dimensions, and positive and negative affect scores were not all normally distributed. Therefore, a t-test
was carried out to compare each variable level between real and virtual conditions for normally distributed variables (i.e., awe, amusement,
pride, joy, and positive affect).
Bold values correspond to significant differences, at least p < .05.
M, mean; SD, standard deviation.
 4 CHIRICO AND GAGGIOLI
Table 2. Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Negative Affect, Descriptive Statistics, and Wilcoxon
Signed-Rank Comparisons in Real and Virtual Conditions
Pre-experimental Natural condition
Measure M SD M SD
Anger 2.54 1.832 2.232 1.701
Disgust 1.96 1.355 1.68 1.314
Fear 2.34 1.733 1.44 1.601
Sadness 2.26 1.509 2.32 1.865
Negative affect 1.678 0.7237 1.27 0.402
Note: n = 50. We carried out nonparametric statistics (Wilcoxon signed-rank test) to test for significant differences between pre- and
postexposure to environments for remaining emotions (i.e., anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and negative affect) and negative affect.
Bold values correspond to significant differences, at least p < .05.
M, mean; SD, standard deviation.
in both formats (real and virtual). Finally, awe significantly
increased after exposure to both environments. In this regard,
naturalistic content has resulted as one of the main elicitors
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of the complex emotion of awe.8
This research aimed to also answer another subtler
question regarding the link between presence and emotions/
affects both in real and virtual naturalistic environments.
Although several evidences showed a relationship between
presence and emotions in virtual reality environments (VREs),4
if and how this link persists even in reality is still an open issue.
This research showed significant correlations between dimen-
sions of presence and emotions/affects both after the in vivo and
in virtuo exposure. Overall, the relationship between presence
dimensions and emotions or affects was far more evident in the
virtual condition compared with the natural one. Negative af-
fect was positively related with the negative effect dimension of
presence, maybe because participants reported negative feel-
ings only when they felt disoriented against the vastness of the
panorama (i.e., feeling of uncertainty24 in front of grand stim-
uli). However, the link between presence and emotions in the
natural condition emerged mainly between positive affect,
sense of engagement, and awe. This is in line with and adds to
Ballew and Omoto’s8 findings showing that real natural envi-
ronments enhanced positive affect and awe as a function of the
degree of perceived absorption.
On the other hand, in the virtual condition, both differently
activating (e.g., joy25 and awe26) and differently valenced
emotions (e.g., fear and joy) correlated with presence di-
mensions. This is partially in contrast to the hypothesis that
presence and emotions would be related, mainly regarding
activating emotional states.27 Specifically, amusement and
awe displayed correlational patterns encompassing all the
dimensions of presence, except for negative effect. Inter-
estingly, the emotion of awe, which is alternatively con-
ceived as a negative or positive status, showed positive
correlations with both the negative and positive affect scales.
Finally, correlations between positive, negative affect,
engagement, and negative effect in both conditions may
support the thesis that the sense of presence is not only a
matter of a technological medium2 (e.g., VR) but it also
could be potentially related to any medium, even to our
body.18 We use our body to interact with the surrounding
world and other people. Presence could be conceived as a
litmus test for successful implementation of our intentions in
the world. The more we experience positive emotions, the
more we feel engaged. The more we live negative affect, the
Virtual condition Pre vs. natural Pre vs. virtual
M SD Z p Z p
1.24 0.597 -1.1 0.271 -2.724 0.006
1.16 0.374 -0.926 0.355 -2.698 0.007
1.80 1.000 0.957 0.339 -0.758 0.449
1.44 0.768 -0.423 0.672 -2.358 0.018
1.37 0.439 -2.910 0.004 -2.750 0.006
more likely we experience negative effects due to interaction
with the surroundings. Moreover, the selected natural sce-
nario could elicit both positive and negative emotions, thus
we overcome the bias related to eliciting and assessing only
positive affect in relation to presence. Precisely, presence
was related both to positive and negative affects, as well as to
positive and negative emotions. Finally, the dimension of
ecological validity displayed an unusual pattern. In this
study, ecological validity showed a positive correlation with
positive affect, instead of with the negative one, this is line
with findings by Riva et al.3 Specifically, in the natural
condition, there were no significant correlations between
ecological validity and affect, whereas in the virtual condi-
tion, again, we found a positive link between this dimension
and positive affect. It is likely that people looked for the
same emotional elicitors they were accustomed to in reality
also in VR. Therefore, ecological validity may have played
a greater role in simulated environments than into real
ones, and it could have led to a positive affect when people
perceived synthetic elicitors as being very close to the
equivalent real ones. However, this could have been a
hindrance when VR resembled exemplars of negative
emotion elicitors. For instance, disgust and ecological va-
lidity were negatively related. This may suggest that the
perception of being close to reality could be disrupted in
case of negative emotions, such as disgust,28 which stim-
ulates an avoidance action/tendency.
Finally, we controlled also for the effect of previous ex-
periences in VR on subsequent affect. We found that when
participants had experienced VR, they were also more prone
to perceive the VR scenario as closer to an authentic and real
one. They resulted as more sensitive to the VR illusion. This
is surprising since it would be plausible to assume the op-
posite. People with previous experiences of VR should be
more aware of the fictitious nature of the VRE. Therefore,
they should perceive it as less authentic. However, we
found the opposite trend. Having more VR experiences
would reinforce the perception of being in front of an au-
thentic reality.
These results may suggest that between VR and reality,
there are not only few degrees of separation but also that they
might not be placed on the same continuum of experience.
Our analyses were quantitative, but it would be useful to
investigate whether VR and reality could bring forth phe-
nomenologically different experiences, both endowed with a
unique identity and the same level of authenticity.
 Downloaded by Iowa State Univ from www.liebertpub.com at 02/08/19. For personal use only.

Table 3. Pearson Correlations Between the Eight Discrete Emotions, Positive and Negative Affects, Sense of Physical Presence, Engagement,
Ecological Validity, and Negative Effects in the In Vivo Condition
ITC-SOPI dimensions Negative affect Positive affect Anger Disgust Fear Pride Amusement Sadness Joy Awe
Sense of physical presence — — — — — — — — — —
Engagement — 0.503* — — — — — — — 0.673**
Ecological validity — — — — — — — — — —
Negative effects 0.507* — — — — — — — — —
Positive affect — — — — — — — — — 0.478**
Negative affect — — — 0.494* 0.651** — — 0.397* — —
Note: N = 15 teams.
*p < 0.05, two-tailed; **p < 0.01. We reported only significant correlations.
ITC-SOPI, ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory.

5
Table 4. Pearson Correlations Between the Eight Discrete Emotions, Positive and Negative Affects, Sense of Physical Presence, Engagement,
Ecological Validity, and Negative Effects in the In Virtuo Condition
ITC-SOPI dimensions Negative affect Positive affect Anger Disgust Fear Pride Amusement Sadness Joy Awe
Sense of physical presence 0.491* 0.690** — — — 0.527* 0.484* — 0.664* 0.771**
Engagement 0.410* 0.771** — — — 0.601** 0.721** — 0.663** 0.792**
Ecological validity — 0.700** — -0.428* — — 0.535** — 0.665* 0.680**
Negative effects 0.585* — — — 0.531** — — — — —
Positive affect — — — — — 0.396* 0.661* — 0.692** 0.680**
Negative affect — — 0.399* 0.739** — — — 0.405*
Note: N = 15 teams.
*p < 0.05, two-tailed; **p < 0.01. We reported only significant correlations.
 6 CHIRICO AND GAGGIOLI
Limitations and future research
Despite measuring positive and negative affects as well as
specific emotions, it would be useful to include other emo-
tions in further studies on this topic. Specifically, it could be
interesting to analyze gender differences related to specific
emotions after exposure to different media. Moreover, we
relied on a specific conception of presence, following the
quadripartite model proposed in the ITC-SOPI14; however, it
could be possible to investigate other dimensions belonging
to the sense of presence, such as realism.29 Finally, the use of
ITC-SOPI to compare mediated and nonmediated environ-
ments is an open question that needs to be further investi-
gated. Furthermore, we considered a 360 video as the most
realistic VR format,12 but other VR formats could be tested.
For instance, it would be possible to allow users to interact
with the VRE and do the same in reality. Finally, this study
could be replicated with different natural scenarios such as
mountains (evoking a feeling of danger) or natural para-
doxical scenarios (such as the view of the earth from outside
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its atmosphere) and a larger sample size.
Conclusions
Our findings indicated that the experiential profiles of
exposure to natural environments in vivo and in virtuo were
not significantly different, suggesting that virtual experience
is a reliable model of the real one. Virtual simulation tech-
nologies are increasingly being applied in psychotherapy,
tourism, museum exhibitions, training, and many other areas.
In all these fields, the degree of similarity between the sim-
ulated and real experiences plays a central role in shaping the
value of the application. If confirmed by future studies, these
findings indicate that emotions in a virtual situation are not
less authentic than in a real situation, supporting the use of
VR and simulation technologies in these areas. Finally, at the
methodological level, these results suggest that VR provides
an ecologically valid paradigm to study emotions in a labo-
ratory.
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
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