Effects of Embodying Emotional Avatars on Thermophysiological Responses and Affective State in Virtual Reality

Designers of virtual characters use facial expressions to display avatar emotions. Previous work revealed connections between emotions and thermoregulatory, e.g., happiness increases and sadness decreases skin temperature. As virtual reality (VR) enables embodying avatars with any facial expression, it is unclear whether embodying avatars with different emotions also affect users’ thermophysiological and emotional responses. We conducted a study with 24 participants who embodied customized avatars displaying happy, neutral, and sad facial expressions in VR. We found that participants’ skin temperature was higher with sad avatars than with happy ones while resting. Despite non-significant pairwise comparisons, descriptive statistics suggest an opposite trend for skin temperature responses during grabbing interactions. We also show that participants felt happier while embodying happy avatars compared to sad avatars. Results indicate that avatars’ emotions impact users’ thermoregulation and affective states. We discuss underlying mechanisms and potential applications.