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Virtual reality (VR) is a potentially challenging social environment for effective communication and collaboration. Thus, we conducted a VR study to determine whether increased familiarity with a teammate would improve performance on a joint decision making task. Specifically, because attitude familiarity, or knowledge of another person's attitudes, has been correlated with better relationship functioning in the past, we anticipated that team performance would improve when teammates were first asked to discuss their task-relevant attitudes with one another. We also hypothesized that increased familiarity would be particularly useful in immersive VR, where typical social and other nonverbal cues were lacking. Twenty pairs recruited from a workplace environment were randomly assigned to either the Familiar or Control condition before completing a joint decision making task both in VR and on desktop monitors. The manipulation of attitude familiarity was successful: pairs in the Familiar condition were significantly more aware of their partners' unique task-relevant attitudes. Results found that in VR, Familiar pairs were more accurate at determining patterns to events. Additionally, for teams less experienced in VR, Familiar pairs were also more accurate at predicting future events. However, there was no meaningful statistical difference in pairs' ability to identify information. Familiar teams also took more time to answer questions, and we found no difference in self-reported communication quality. Overall, this was the first successful manipulation of attitude familiarity and results indicate that such an intervention may prove useful in a collaborative work environment, as Familiar teams demonstrated greater accuracy, especially in VR.

Previous literature suggests that a disturbed ability to accurately identify own body size may contribute to overweight. Here, we investigated the influence of personal body size, indexed by body mass index (BMI), on body size estimation in a non-clinical population of females varying in BMI. We attempted to disentangle general biases in body size estimates and attitudinal influences by manipulating whether participants believed the body stimuli (personalized avatars with realistic weight variations) represented their own body or that of another person. Our results show that the accuracy of own body size estimation is predicted by personal BMI, such that participants with lower BMI underestimated their body size and participants with higher BMI overestimated their body size. Further, participants with higher BMI were less likely to notice the same percentage of weight gain than participants with lower BMI. Importantly, these results were only apparent when participants were judging a virtual body that was their own identity (Experiment 1), but not when they estimated the size of a body with another identity and the same underlying body shape (Experiment 2a). The different influences of BMI on accuracy of body size estimation and sensitivity to weight change for self and other identity suggests that effects of BMI on visual body size estimation are self-specific and not generalizable to other bodies.

Previous research has demonstrated an influence of one's emotional state on estimates of spatial layout. For example, estimates of heights are larger when the viewer is someone typically afraid of heights (trait fear) or someone who, in the moment, is experiencing elevated levels of fear (state fear). Embodied perception theories have suggested that such a change in perception occurs in order to alter future actions in a manner that reduces the likelihood of injury. However, other work has argued that when acting, it is important to have access to an accurate perception of space and that a change in conscious perception does not necessitate a change in action. No one has yet investigated emotional state, perceptual estimates, and action performance in a single paradigm. The goal of the current paper was to investigate whether fear influences perceptual estimates and action measures similarly or in a dissociable manner. In the current work, participants either estimated gap widths (Experiment 1) or were asked to step over gaps (Experiment 2) in a virtual environment. To induce fear, the gaps were placed at various heights up to 15 meters. Results showed an increase in gap width estimates as participants indicated experiencing more fear. The increase in gap estimates was mirrored in participants' stepping behavior in Experiment 2; participants stepped over fewer gaps when experiencing higher state and trait fear and, when participants actually stepped, they stepped farther over gap widths when experiencing more fear. The magnitude of the influence of fear on both perception and action were also remarkably similar (5.3 and 3.9 cm, respectively). These results lend support to embodied perception claims by demonstrating an influence on action of a similar magnitude as seen on estimates of gap widths.