Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality

Andrea Stevenson Won; Swati Pandita; Kaylee Payne Kruzan

doi:10.1089/cyber.2020.0055

Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality

Andrea Stevenson Won^*, Swati Pandita, Kaylee Payne Kruzan

^*Corresponding author for this work

Preventive Medicine

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	829-845
Number of pages	17
Journal	Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
Volume	23
Issue number	12
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0055
State	Published - Dec 2020

Funding

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.

Keywords

induced pain
pain
social closeness
social presence
transportation
virtual reality

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Communication
Social Psychology
Human-Computer Interaction
Applied Psychology
Computer Science Applications

Access to Document

10.1089/cyber.2020.0055

Cite this

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abstract = "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.",

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note = "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: {\textcopyright} Copyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.",

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Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality

Abstract

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