The buffering of autonomic fear responses is moderated by the characteristics of a virtual character

Abstract

The presence of a conspecific can mitigate autonomic responses to aversive stimuli, an effect known as social buffering. Nowadays, social interactions are often virtual, yet virtual social buffering effects remain poorly understood. This work presents five studies that systematically test the conditions required for virtual social buffering. We assessed participants’ emotion ratings and skin conductance responses when they were presented with neutral or fear-inducing sounds alone or in the presence of a virtual character with a varying extent of human-like features (virtual female or male person, wooden puppet, point cloud). The characters were presented using the same social framing, i.e., had the same social meaning. Our results show a significant reduction in SCR responses to fear-inducing sounds in the presence of a virtual character, but only if it is embodied as a woman or a wooden puppet. Clarifying the role of the social frame, a control study showed no social buffering effects if the wooden puppet was presented without the social frame. Our results show that the characteristics of a virtual character significantly moderate the social buffering of fear responses. Our findings shed light on the nature of virtual social buffering effects and are relevant for developing virtual applications for clinical and societal interventions.