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How Avatar Customization Affects Fear in a Game-based Digital Exposure Task for Social Anxiety
- Source :
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CHI PLAY):248. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2021.
-
Abstract
- The treatment of social anxiety through digital exposure therapy is challenging due to the cognitive properties of social anxiety-individuals need to be fully engaged in the task and feel themselves represented in the social situation; however, avatar customization has been shown to increase both engagement and social presence. In this paper, we harness techniques used in commercial games, and investigate how customizing self-representation in a novel digital exposure task for social anxiety influences the experience of social threat. In an online experiment with 200 participants, participants either customized their avatar or were assigned a predefined avatar. Participants then controlled the avatar through a virtual shop, where they had to solve a math problem, while a simulated audience within the virtual world observed them and negatively judged their performance. Our findings show that we can stimulate the fear of evaluation by others in our task, that fear is driven primarily by trait social anxiety, and that this relationship is strengthened for people higher in trait social anxiety. We provide new insights into the effects of customization in a novel therapeutic context, and embed the discussion of avatar customization into related work in social anxiety and human-computer interaction. ?
- Subjects :
- Computer Networks and Communications
medicine.medical_treatment
Social anxiety
Exposure therapy
Applied psychology
ComputingMilieux_PERSONALCOMPUTING
Cognition
Context (language use)
Personalization
Task (project management)
Human-Computer Interaction
avatar customization
Trait
medicine
social anxiety
gaming
Psychology
intervention
Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
social phobia
Avatar
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 25730142
- Volume :
- 5
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....006fcd0ee36b548cd39b83436e7428bf