Emotional experiences in VR
Researchers have found that VR can provide an environment in which people can emotionally interact and that this experience is comparable to emotional interactions in reality (Teo et al., 2016). This may be facilitated by the capability of VR to facilitate people's imagination, enabling them to visualise situations they may otherwise find difficult and eliciting an array of emotions, including joy and anxiety (Felnhofer et al., 2015). This may be important in investigating the ability of VR to augment people's minds because this may make it possible to give people emotional experiences in which they can learn from and use to their benefit in future situations requiring an emotions-led response. Furthermore, it may also provide an opportunity to develop positive self-efficacy, which some have considered the most important predictor of safety-related behaviour (Didarloo et al., 2017).
Moderating emotions in VR
Some studies have gone further by exploring the ability of VR to moderate emotions. In one such study in which the participants lived with severe mental health conditions resulting from serious spinal cord injuries, researchers demonstrated that a mindfulness training intervention delivered through VR could reduce negative emotions and improve their overall mental health (Flores et al., 2018). The results are a cause for excitement because this may indicate the extensive capability and broad application of VR to restore positive cognitive functioning by moderating emotion. Whilst caution should be paid to this study which consisted of only two participants, other research (Montana et al., 2020) has found similar findings.
Training in VR to improve emotional resilience
Another study that conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature on emotion regulation and where VR was used as an intervention medium found that people could be trained in virtual environments to better manage emotionally challenging situations in real life (Montana et al., 2020). The research also found that what underpinned people's ability to change and improve their emotional intelligence was that virtual environments allowed them to experience, evaluate and modify their strategies, thus creating a blueprint in their memory for use in future scenarios. This does not seem to be a prominent form of mind augmentation. However, it could be argued that VR may give people an advantage over those who do not use VR because VR can facilitate repeated reflection on a given experience, which is an important learning component (Boud, 2006, pp.3). In VR, this reflection can be facilitated by replaying or pausing an experience, giving the participant time to reflect in a way that real-life experiences cannot. The action of reflection can also take part with other people, which has been positively correlated to reinforced learning in VR (Blanco-Fernández et al., 2014). This may suggest that a blended approach may be most appropriate, where VR provides the experience and people reinforce the learning.
Conclusion
The research seems to indicate that VR can impact emotions and that the experiences VR can provide can be used to positively shape the way people learn in a more meaningful and memorable way. There is more research work to do, but the signs are very promising and if used in the right way, VR could help people better regulate their emotions in real-life.