TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality
AU - Won, Andrea Stevenson
AU - Pandita, Swati
AU - Kruzan, Kaylee Payne
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank all the research assistants who helped to conduct the experiment: Lily Croskey-Englert, Carlos Fernandez, Daniel Gastin, Akhil Gopu, Lauren Hsu, T. Milos Kartalijia, Byungdoo Kim, Jane Jar-yung Kim, Jueun Kim, Cat Lambert, Mary Le, Kristi Lin, Elan Loeb, Anirudh Maddula, Katy Miller, Alice Nam, Amy Perelberg, Gabrielle Roitman, Grayson Rosenberg, Giulia Reversi, Frank Rodriguez, Katherine Tang, Janie Jaffe Walter, Jason Wu, Yutong Wu, Jessie Yee, Leezel Zamidar, Yutong Zhou, and Joshua Zhu. We thank the Translational Research Institute on Pain in Later Life for the pilot grant, which helped to fund this project. We also thank Stephen Parry of the Cornell Statistical Consulting Unit for his help with the analysis, and Daniel Alexander, Jacob Grippen, and Florio Arguillas of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) for helping validate the code and archiving the data. Finally, we thank our participants.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - This experiment examined the effects of social presence and perceived location of a virtual environment on participants' pain thresholds in a preregistered, within-subjects experiment. First, we examined the effects of social interaction versus being alone in a virtual environment. Second, we compared a virtual environment representing a remote location to a replication of the laboratory environment. Social interaction predicted increased pain tolerance, but there was no effect of the "location"of the virtual environment. To our knowledge, this research project is the first to use real-time social interaction in virtual reality as a distractor for experimental thermal pain, and the first to examine the potential interaction between social interaction and transportation to different virtual locations. While this task is not directly analogous to the experience of pain in a medical setting, this preliminary study indicates future avenues for patient treatment.
AB - This experiment examined the effects of social presence and perceived location of a virtual environment on participants' pain thresholds in a preregistered, within-subjects experiment. First, we examined the effects of social interaction versus being alone in a virtual environment. Second, we compared a virtual environment representing a remote location to a replication of the laboratory environment. Social interaction predicted increased pain tolerance, but there was no effect of the "location"of the virtual environment. To our knowledge, this research project is the first to use real-time social interaction in virtual reality as a distractor for experimental thermal pain, and the first to examine the potential interaction between social interaction and transportation to different virtual locations. While this task is not directly analogous to the experience of pain in a medical setting, this preliminary study indicates future avenues for patient treatment.
KW - induced pain
KW - pain
KW - social closeness
KW - social presence
KW - transportation
KW - virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097932459&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85097932459&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1089/cyber.2020.0055
DO - 10.1089/cyber.2020.0055
M3 - Article
C2 - 33179974
AN - SCOPUS:85097932459
SN - 2152-2715
VL - 23
SP - 829
EP - 845
JO - Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
JF - Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
IS - 12
ER -