Understanding the Effects of Interaction on Emotional Experiences in VRVirtual reality has been effectively used for eliciting emotions, yet most research focuses on the intensity of affective responses rather than on how interaction influences those experiences. To address this gap, we advance a validated VR emotion-elicitation dataset through two key extensions. First, we add a new high-arousal, high-valence scene and validate its effectiveness in a within-subject study (N=24). Second, we incorporate interactive elements into each scene, creating both interactive and non-interactive versions to examine the impact of interaction on emotional responses. We evaluate interaction through a multimodal approach combining subjective ratings and physiological signals to capture both conscious and unconscious affective responses. Our evaluation study (N=84) shows that interaction not only amplifies emotions but modulates them in context, supporting coping in negative scenes and enhancing enjoyment in positive scenes. These findings highlight the potential of scene-tailored interaction for different applications, where regulating emotions is as important as eliciting them.2026ZKZheyuan Kuang et al.The University of SydneyImmersion & Presence ResearchAffective Feedback & Emotion Regulation InterfacesSocial & Collaborative VRCHI
A Tree’s Perspective: Enhancing Nature Connectedness Through Transitional and Multisensory Virtual Reality ExperiencesEmbodying natural entities in Virtual Reality (VR) shows potential to enhance nature connectedness, but design factors that support such embodiment remain underexplored. This study examined whether transitional elements in the physical setting before and after VR and multisensory stimuli during VR can strengthen nature connectedness in a transformative tree-embodiment experience. Through a mixed-methods approach (N=20), where we varied the pre- and post-VR experience (Neutral vs. Transitional) and sensory modalities (Audiovisual vs. Multisensory), we found that both transitional and multisensory experiences significantly enhanced presence, embodiment, and nature connectedness, with increases in emotional connectedness sustained one week later. Drawing on interview insights and impact ratings of specific design features, we derive design recommendations for integrating transitional and multisensory elements. Our findings demonstrate the value of holistic design for enhancing the emotional and transformative potential of VR nature embodiment for fostering environmental awareness.2026LTJulian Rasch et al.TU Dortmund UniversityImmersion & Presence ResearchMultisensory Fusion ExperienceHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI
Balancing Accuracy and Embodiment: A Hybrid Perspective for Complex Visuomotor Tasks in VRVisual perspective is a crucial design factor in Virtual Reality (VR). Especially when complex motor tasks are involved, it can affect both objective performance and subjective experience. We compared four visual perspectives (First-Person view, translucent Ghost view, Third-Person view, and Hybrid view) in a user study (N=20) involving different difficulties in a balancing game. Our findings reveal complex tradeoffs between the sense of embodiment, performance, and preference: The preferred Hybrid perspective offered a significant stability advantage for low task difficulty. However, this benefit vanished with increasing physical demand, revealing a speed-accuracy trade-off where external views required longer completion times. Ego-centric perspectives (First and Ghost) induced a stronger sense of embodiment and presence, but were less preferred. Participants' choice was not determined by representational fidelity but by pragmatic considerations of perceived utility. As perceived effectiveness can overrule objective performance and subjective experience, the choice of perspective is an important factor for future training and rehabilitation applications in VR.2026DDDennis Dietz et al.LMU MunichSocial & Collaborative VRImmersion & Presence ResearchVR Medical Training & RehabilitationCHI
Anticipation Before Action: EEG-Based Implicit Intent Detection for Adaptive Gaze Interaction in Mixed RealityMixed Reality (MR) interfaces increasingly rely on gaze for interaction, yet distinguishing visual attention from intentional action remains difficult, leading to the Midas Touch problem. Existing solutions require explicit confirmations, while brain–computer interfaces may provide an implicit marker of intention using Stimulus-Preceding Negativity (SPN). We investigated how Intention (Select vs. Observe) and Feedback (With vs. Without) modulate SPN during gaze-based MR interactions. During realistic selection tasks, we acquired EEG and eye-tracking data from 28 participants.SPN was robustly elicited and sensitive to both factors: observation without feedback produced the strongest amplitudes, while intention to select and expectation of feedback reduced activity, suggesting SPN reflects anticipatory uncertainty rather than motor preparation. Complementary decoding with deep learning models achieved reliable person-dependent classification of user intention, with accuracies ranging from 75% to 97% across participants. These findings identify SPN as an implicit marker for building intention-aware MR interfaces that mitigate the Midas Touch.2026FCFrancesco Chiossi et al.LMU MunichEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackImmersion & Presence ResearchCHI
Campus AI vs. Commercial AI: Comparing How Students and Employees Perceive their University’s LLM Chatbot vs. ChatGPTAs the use of LLM chatbots by students and researchers becomes more prevalent, universities are pressed to develop AI strategies. One strategy that many universities pursue is to customize pre-trained LLM-as-a-service (LLMaaS) chatbots. While most studies on LLMaaS chatbots prioritize technical adaptations, these systems are often mainly characterized by user-salient front-end customizations, e.g., interface changes. Yet, no existing studies have examined how users perceive such systems compared to commercial LLM chatbots. In a field study, we investigate how students and employees (N = 526) at a German university perceive and use their institution's customized LLMaaS chatbot compared to ChatGPT. Participants using both systems (n = 116) reported greater trust, higher perceived privacy, and less perceived hallucinations with their university's customized LLMaaS chatbot compared to ChatGPT. We discuss implications for research on users' trustworthiness assessment process, and offer guidance for the design and deployment of LLMaaS chatbots.2026LHLeon Hannig et al.University of Duisburg-EssenHuman-LLM CollaborationExplainable AI (XAI)AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationCHI
Virtual Body Swapping: A VR-Based Approach to Embodied Third-Person Self-Processing in Mind-Body TherapyVirtual reality (VR) offers various opportunities for innovative therapeutic approaches, especially regarding self-related mind-body interventions. We introduce a VR body swap system enabling multiple users to swap their perspectives and appearances and evaluate its effects on virtual sense of embodiment (SoE) and perception- and cognition-based self-related processes. In a self-compassion-framed scenario, twenty participants embodied their personalized, photorealistic avatar, swapped bodies with an unfamiliar peer, and reported their SoE, interoceptive awareness (perception), and self-compassion (cognition). Participants' experiences differed between bottom-up and top-down processes. Regarding SoE, their agency and self-location shifted to the swap avatar, while their top-down self-identification remained with their personalized avatar. Further, the experience positively affected interoceptive awareness but not self-compassion. Our outcomes offer novel insights into the SoE in a multiple-embodiment scenario and highlight the need to differentiate between the different processes in intervention design. They raise concerns and requirements for future research on avatar-based mind-body interventions.2024NDNina Döllinger et al.University of WürzburgImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRVR Medical Training & RehabilitationCHI
52 Weeks Later: Attitudes Towards COVID-19 Apps for Different Purposes Over TimeThe COVID-19 pandemic has prompted countries around the world to introduce smartphone apps to support disease control efforts. Their purposes range from digital contact tracing to quarantine enforcement to vaccination passports, and their effectiveness often depends on widespread adoption. While previous work has identified factors that promote or hinder adoption, it has typically examined data collected at a single point in time or focused exclusively on digital contact tracing apps. In this work, we conduct the first representative study that examines changes in people’s attitudes towards COVID-19-related smartphone apps for five different purposes over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. In three survey rounds conducted between Summer 2020 and Summer 2021 in the United States and Germany, with approximately 1,000 participants per round and country, we investigate people’s willingness to use such apps, their perceived utility, and people’s attitudes towards them in different stages of the pandemic. Our results indicate that privacy is a consistent concern for participants, even in a public health crisis, and the collection of identity-related data significantly decreases acceptance of COVID-19 apps. Trust in authorities is essential to increase confidence in government-backed apps and foster citizens’ willingness to contribute to crisis management. There is a need for continuous communication with app users to emphasize the benefits of health crisis apps both for individuals and society, thus counteracting decreasing willingness to use them and perceived usefulness as the pandemic evolves.2023MKMarvin Kowalewski et al.COVID-19 + CSCWCSCW
Are Embodied Avatars Harmful to our Self-Experience? The Impact of Virtual Embodiment on Body AwarenessVirtual Reality (VR) allows us to replace our visible body with a virtual self-representation (avatar) and to explore its effects on our body perception. While the feeling of owning and controlling a virtual body is widely researched, how VR affects the awareness of internal body signals (body awareness) remains open. Forty participants performed moving meditation tasks in reality and VR, either facing their mirror image or not. Both the virtual environment and avatars photorealistically matched their real counterparts. We found a negative effect of VR on body awareness, mediated by feeling embodied in and changed by the avatar. Further, we revealed a negative effect of a mirror on body awareness. Our results indicate that assessing body awareness should be essential in evaluating VR designs and avatar embodiment aiming at mental health, as even a scenario as close to reality as possible can distract users from their internal body signals.2023NDNina Döllinger et al.University of WürzburgImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRCHI
Impact of Annotator Demographics on Sentiment Dataset LabelingAs machine learning methods become more powerful and capture more nuances of human behavior, biases in the dataset can shape what the model learns and is evaluated on. This paper explores and attempts to quantify the uncertainties and biases due to \textit{annotator} demographics when creating sentiment analysis datasets. We ask $>$1000 crowdworkers to provide their demographic information and annotations for multimodal sentiment data and its component modalities. We show that demographic differences among annotators impute a significant effect on their ratings, and that these effects also occur in each component modality. We compare predictions of different state-of-the-art multimodal machine learning algorithms against annotations provided by different demographic groups, and find that changing annotator demographics can cause $>$4.5\% in accuracy difference when determining positive versus negative sentiment. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for crowdworker attributes, such as demographics, when building datasets, evaluating algorithms, and interpreting results for sentiment analysis.2022YDYi Ding et al.Data, Bias and FairnessCSCW
Impact of Annotator Demographics on Sentiment Dataset LabelingAs machine learning methods become more powerful and capture more nuances of human behavior, biases in the dataset can shape what the model learns and is evaluated on. This paper explores and attempts to quantify the uncertainties and biases due to \textit{annotator} demographics when creating sentiment analysis datasets. We ask $>$1000 crowdworkers to provide their demographic information and annotations for multimodal sentiment data and its component modalities. We show that demographic differences among annotators impute a significant effect on their ratings, and that these effects also occur in each component modality. We compare predictions of different state-of-the-art multimodal machine learning algorithms against annotations provided by different demographic groups, and find that changing annotator demographics can cause $>$4.5\% in accuracy difference when determining positive versus negative sentiment. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for crowdworker attributes, such as demographics, when building datasets, evaluating algorithms, and interpreting results for sentiment analysis.2022YDYi Ding et al.Data, Bias and FairnessCSCW
There Is No First- or Third-Person View in Virtual Reality: Understanding the Perspective ContinuumModern games make creative use of First- and Third-person perspectives (FPP and TPP) to allow the player to explore virtual worlds. Traditionally, FPP and TPP perspectives are seen as distinct concepts. Yet, Virtual Reality (VR) allows for flexibility in choosing perspectives. We introduce the notion of a perspective continuum in VR, which is technically related to the camera position and conceptually to how users perceive their environment in VR. A perspective continuum enables adapting and manipulating the sense of agency and involvement in the virtual world. This flexibility of perspectives broadens the design space of VR experiences through deliberately manipulating perception. In a study, we explore users' attitudes, experiences and perceptions while controlling a virtual character from the two known perspectives. Statistical analysis of the empirical results shows the existence of a perspective continuum in VR. Our findings can be used to design experiences based on shifts of perception.2022MHMatthias Hoppe et al.LMU MunichImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRCHI