Title |
Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud—A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling
|
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Published in |
Scientific Reports, September 2015
|
DOI | 10.1038/srep13899 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Sofia Adelaide Osimo, Rodrigo Pizarro, Bernhard Spanlang, Mel Slater |
Abstract |
When people see a life-sized virtual body (VB) from first person perspective in virtual reality they are likely to have the perceptual illusion that it is their body. Additionally such virtual embodiment can lead to changes in perception, implicit attitudes and behaviour based on attributes of the VB. To date the changes that have been studied are as a result of being embodied in a body representative of particular social groups (e.g., children and other race). In our experiment participants alternately switched between a VB closely resembling themselves where they described a personal problem, and a VB representing Dr Sigmund Freud, from which they offered themselves counselling. Here we show that when the counsellor resembles Freud participants improve their mood, compared to the counsellor being a self-representation. The improvement was greater when the Freud VB moved synchronously with the participant, compared to asynchronously. Synchronous VB movement was associated with a much stronger illusion of ownership over the Freud body. This suggests that this form of embodied perspective taking can lead to sufficient detachment from habitual ways of thinking about personal problems, so as to improve the outcome, and demonstrates the power of virtual body ownership to effect cognitive changes. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 18 | 17% |
United States | 14 | 13% |
Spain | 9 | 9% |
Germany | 3 | 3% |
Japan | 3 | 3% |
Australia | 2 | 2% |
Netherlands | 2 | 2% |
France | 2 | 2% |
Denmark | 2 | 2% |
Other | 14 | 13% |
Unknown | 35 | 34% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 71 | 68% |
Scientists | 17 | 16% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 14 | 13% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 2 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Spain | 4 | 1% |
Germany | 3 | <1% |
France | 1 | <1% |
Netherlands | 1 | <1% |
United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
Italy | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 340 | 97% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 65 | 19% |
Researcher | 47 | 13% |
Student > Master | 44 | 13% |
Student > Bachelor | 42 | 12% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 23 | 7% |
Other | 62 | 18% |
Unknown | 68 | 19% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 87 | 25% |
Computer Science | 56 | 16% |
Neuroscience | 23 | 7% |
Social Sciences | 21 | 6% |
Engineering | 20 | 6% |
Other | 57 | 16% |
Unknown | 87 | 25% |