Würzburg. An avatar helps against fear – but not everyone. Researchers at the University of Würzburg have now discovered this and have now published their findings in a specialist journal.
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In a terrifying situation, many people feel less anxious if they don’t have to go through it alone. However, this does not necessarily apply if these people suffer from pronounced social anxiety – that is, they are afraid of embarrassing themselves in public. Does the calming influence of a companion then turn into the opposite? Whether a virtual companion could be the solution to the problem in such cases and how women and men differ in such situations: this was investigated by a team of scientists from the University and the University Hospital of Würzburg. It has now published the results in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
The researchers found that virtual companions can also dampen fears. In their research, a group of women benefited particularly from this support.
Scientists from the University and the University Hospital of Würzburg and Zhengzhou University (China) participated in the study, including representatives from neurosciences, psychology and computer science. Responsible for this was Grit Hein, Professor of Translational Social Neurosciences at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Würzburg University Hospital.
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“In a nutshell, we show that fear can also be reduced by the ‘presence’ of a virtual person, especially in socially fearful women. And in general, women seem to benefit more from the presence of third parties than men, ”says Hein, summarizing the main results of the study. This knowledge could potentially be of practical importance for the treatment of anxiety disorders. 208 men and women took part in the study. Fear-inducing noises were played to all of them, alternating with neutral sounds – sometimes accompanied by a person, sometimes without. The rule was: women were given companions, men companions.
On the one hand, the research team determined the degree of fear reaction of the test persons via the change in skin conductivity. On the other hand, the test subjects had to rate the noises on a given scale.
The test series differed in one essential criterion: While one group had a real person on site during the experiment, the second group carried out the task in a virtual reality – with an avatar on the side that replicated the real companion in a lifelike manner was. “Previous experiments have shown that the presence of a third party can reduce physiological fear responses. In such cases, social support acts like a stress buffer, ”explains Grit Hein.
However, not all people are equally sociable. For some, the very presence of another person creates anxiety or fear. They fear that their companion might perceive fear reactions such as trembling, blushing or sweating in them, and therefore get even more stressful. Whether an avatar is also able to evoke such a reaction has not yet been clarified beyond doubt. The results of the Würzburg study now provide clarity. They show that women react much more strongly to fear-inducing noises than men. Especially with women, the presence of third parties reduces anxiety. This is especially true for women who do not have pronounced social fears. The presence of a virtual person also reduces the fear response in women – regardless of how strongly they are affected by social fears. A virtual agent can therefore increase the feeling of security in women with pronounced social fears.
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Social anxiety does not have a comparable impact on men. “Our results provide new insights into the individual differences that influence the social modulation of autonomous human fear reactions,” write the authors of the study in their abstract. In future studies it would be interesting to examine these effects when processing positive stimuli.
In addition, they would like future studies to systematically explore the effect of the sex of the “uninvolved third party”. Then scientifically sound statements could be made about how men react when a woman stands by them in a fear-inducing situation – and vice versa.
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