Research team's VR study shows interaction modulates emotions, not just amplifies them

A research team from multiple institutions, including authors Zheyuan Kuang, Tinghui Li, and Sven Mayer, has published a significant study on how user interaction influences emotional experiences in Virtual Reality. The paper, accepted for the 2026 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, addresses a critical gap in VR research, which has traditionally focused on measuring emotional intensity rather than understanding how interactive elements shape those feelings. The researchers advanced a validated VR emotion-elicitation dataset through two key extensions: adding a new high-arousal, high-valence scene and, crucially, creating interactive versions of all scenes to compare against passive viewing.

The team conducted a robust within-subject study (N=24) to validate the new scene and a larger evaluation study (N=84) to assess the impact of interaction. They employed a multimodal approach, combining subjective user ratings with physiological signals to capture both conscious and unconscious affective responses. The findings reveal that interaction does more than simply amplify emotions; it modulates them in a context-dependent manner. Specifically, interaction helped users cope with negative emotional scenes and enhanced their enjoyment in positive ones. This highlights the potential for designing 'scene-tailored' interactions in therapeutic, training, and entertainment applications where regulating emotion is as important as eliciting it.