DC-“Born Again”: En/De-Roling, Character Identification, & VR Effects

With the rise of the metaverse, humans are increasingly spending time in mediated spaces, emphasizing the importance to understand how immersive experiences shape individual and collective behavior in various contexts (e.g., enterprise, entertainment). Two particularly important factors emerging in metaverse technologies relate to how users of virtual reality (VR) adapt and relinquish their character roles (en/de-roling), and the extent to which they identify with said roles.. Despite the prominent reliance of character roles in most VR experiences, and its noted influence on aspects of user experience (UX), little is understood about (a) how users adapt and relinquish their roles, and (b) how this process may shape affective and cognitive responses through altered identification. To address this gap, the current work employs a mixed-methods approach to understand how VR effects are influenced by these two factors.