Physiological and Perceptual Responses to Athletic Avatars while Cycling in Virtual Reality

Avatars in virtual reality (VR) enable embodied experiences and induce the Proteus effect—a shift in behavior and attitude to mimic one’s digital representation. Previous work found that avatars associated with physical strength can decrease users’ perceived exertion when performing physical tasks. However, it is unknown if an avatar’s appearance can also influence the user’s physiological response to exercises. Therefore, we conducted an experiment with 24 participants to investigate the effect of avatars’ athleticism on heart rate and perceived exertion while cycling in VR following a standardized protocol. We found that the avatars’ athleticism has a significant and systematic effect on users’ heart rate and perceived exertion. We discuss potential moderators such as body ownership and users’ level of fitness. Our work contributes to the emerging area of VR exercise systems.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

• Publication date

  2021-05-06

• Fields of study

  Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1145/3411764.3445160
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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