The Effect of Realism on Emotional Reactivity in Virtual

Reality
CGT 515, Spring 2019
Martin Chang Welly Chang Carly Fox Justin Legare
Computer Graphics Computer Graphics Computer Graphics Computer Graphics
Technology Technology Technology Technology
Purdue University Purdue University Purdue University Purdue University
chang309@purdue.edu chang238@purdue.edu fox54@purdue.edu jlegare@purdue.edu
Abstract
This research explores the ways in which realism affects emotional reactivity in virtual reality.
Participants will experience a short VR simulation in which they have the opportunity to bond
with a virtual dog by petting, feeding, playing fetch, and dressing him. After interacting with the
dog for a short period of time, their reaction to the dog’s death will be evaluated. Participants
will be assigned to one of four test conditions. Each participant will be randomly assigned either
a realistic or stylized dog which will be randomly paired with either a realistic or stylized
environment. The intensity of the participant’s emotional response to the dog’s death in each
condition will determine the effect that model realism has on emotional reactivity, and whether a
mismatch in realism between the realism of the environment and the characters within it has an
effect on emotional reactivity. The results of this study can be utilized by developers to
determine the level of realism required to achieve the desired level of emotional reactivity in
projects featuring computer generated characters and environments.

1. Introduction create that emotional experience would be

Developing emotional attachment to
characters and environments is a goal for
many game developers and animators. The
most common understanding is that the
more realistic the character is, the stronger
the emotional attachment. Our study hopes
to find statistically whether the level of
realism affects a player’s emotional
experience, and if there is a significant
difference in emotional reactivity with
various levels of realism. For example, if it
is found that a low poly character could
create the same level of attachment as a
higher poly character, developers aiming to
able to save time and manpower by focusing
their efforts on other parts of the
development process. Models, especially
those with high levels of realism, require
more time to create, as well as a higher level
of skill. If it is found that there is a
difference with higher realism creating more
emotion, then developers can focus more
efforts toward creating that realistic
experience. The results of this study provide
data addressing these concerns.
2. Review of Literature
In order to provide a sufficient
emotional reaction for measurement and

1
comparison amongst varying levels of
realism, the player must be fully immersed
with the interactive pet. For the purposes of
this paper, given the interaction with
character, this type of immersion will be
referred to as “engagement.” Engagement
plays the important role of developing a
positive attitude toward the pet, which, when
presented with the the virtual pet in pain,
increases the perception of pain in the
animal (Ellingsen et at, 2010). But not only
is engagement important, but also the initial
reaction to when the pet is introduced. To
enhance the temporary virtual relationship,
the player must find the the dog cute to
begin with. While the cuteness of the dog is
not the only indication of the quality of the
relationship, it may enhance the perceived
desirable attributes of the pet (Thorn et at,
2015). The same study also found that by
enhancing the bond between owner and
canine, the perceived cuteness may also
increase. These factors, cuteness and
engagement are valuable in establishing the
bond between the virtual pet and the player.
When faced with the tragedy of the
virtual pet in an agonizing situation (in the
case of the experiment, choking, see
reasoning in ​Methodology ​section), the
player experiences an emotional reaction
similar to that of grief. Goose and Barns
(1994) conducted a study on the levels of
grief in the death of a pet, accounting for
different variables such as self-reported
quality of relationship with the pet, length of
time of pet ownership, and whether the
amount of people living in the household
affected the amount of grief experienced.
They found that the quality of the
relationship, or “level of attachment” was
one of their most significant indicators of a
high level of grief, as well as social
isolation, or living alone or with no kids,
played a large role as well, but surprisingly
length of time had little impact upon level of
grief (Goose, Barns, 1994). Factoring in
these findings, the design of the simulation
is set up to create the most impactful
reported grief, which in turn, will cause a
sufficient emotion reaction to measure.
Placing the player in an environment to that
of a small apartment, the player will be
essentially isolated, and as mentioned
previously, establishing the relationship,
even if not for very long, will help increase
the bond between the virtual pet and the
player.
All this bonding is underlined with
the assumption that the player will find the
pet and its actions believable to the point
where they suspend their disbelief and
engage with the virtual character. Making
the dog come across as realistic in its actions
through the animation and AI, across all
variations of the models of realism, is
important in isolating the visual realism
variable from its counterparts. Choosing
when the pet reacts to events and expressing
those emotions in the animation that follows
are key in providing the player with caring
about the fictional character (Bates, 1994).
“If the [virtual pet] does not react
emotionally to events - if they don’t care,
then neither will we.” Bates quote from his
paper, “The role of emotion in believable
agents,” sums up the artistic and
programming challenges faced with
constructing a fictional character and
2
devising a strategy to create emotional
attachment.
In another study, researchers
attempted to do the opposite, to break the
immersion in a game (Cheng & Cairns,
2005). By swapping out realistic textures
with flat palette textures and messing with
the physics, player immersion would be
interrupted as their focus was on the task at
hand. Surprisingly, although not entirely
conclusive, they determined by observation
and interview that players were either not
affected by the changes or failed to notice
them, not detracting from the game
experience. This begs the question of
whether there is a difference between the
realism expected with the game, and how
well a player engages with the environment
and the characters. Cheng & Cairns suggest
that once a level of immersion has been
achieved, the threshold for breaking that
immersion becomes higher and more
difficult to achieve. As applicable to our
study, by establishing the immersion as
quickly as possible, making the environment
and character as a seamless transition from
real life to the virtual world, the player
should acquire the proper engagement
needed to conduct the emotional reactivity
test. A prior publication, suggests that there
are 2 barriers of entry to immersion,
engagement, engrossment, and when
satisfied full immersion is achieved (Brown
& Cairns, 2004). A willingness to subject
yourself to the environment allows
engagement and then “game construction”
that changes an emotion creates the feeling
of engrossment (Brown & Cairns, 2004).
When those are established, presence is
achieved, which gives the player the full
immersion in the environment. Similar to
the concept of “Flow” proposed by
Csikszentmihalyi in 1990, it requires a level
of emotional and thoughtful engagement to
enter. However, unlike flow, the findings
from Brown and Cairns research suggest
that once a player has entered immersion,
the “coherence is not necessary” and the
player tends to gloss over the inconsistencies
(Cheng & Cairns, 2005). Given this
information, the first minute of the
simulation may be the most important to
establishing not only a good relationship
with the virtual animal, but also the
threshold required for immersion that the
simulation needs.
These readings establish a few
guidelines to creating a level of realism and
generating a situation where the proper
desired emotion reaction can be achieved,
yet in the literature, there is no indication of
a visual realism on in the impact of emotion.
While Bates in 1994 wrote of the
importance of emotion in animation, using
Disney animations as an example of proper
emotional display, there is no mention of the
level of detail of the character in
establishing that emotion. Given the increase
in graphic performance of games as they
trend closer and closer to the photorealism,
does this actually have any effect on the
emotional reaction of the player (Philips,
2017)? Richard Huddy, a gaming scientist at
AMD, describes the limit as 16K gaming;
human sight (assuming 20/20 vision) he
claims as requiring “something like 8K
vertically and 16K horizontally to get
everything right” (Huddy, Sacco, 2015).
3
With 4k gaming already commercialised and
8K not too far behind, the “cap” of visual
stimulus is fast approaching over the coming
decades. This brings up the question to
every designer however: does that increase
in visual complexity really improve the
emotional impact of a character?
Additionally, does a dissociation of realism
in the environment and interactive features
affect that level of emotional reactivity?
Considering the gap in the literature on
visual realism and emotion, this study hopes
to provide quantifiable and qualifiable data
to help address this problem, and provide
future avenues for research into storytelling
and the development pipeline regarding the
visual intricacy in games and interactive
media.
3. Methodology
A virtual reality application was
developed in which the participant is
presented with a virtual puppy to bond with.
There were four possible conditions that the
participant could have received, which were
applied based on a random number. These
four conditions were comprised of 1) a
realistic environment and realistic dog. 2) a
realistic environment with a cartoon dog. 3)
a cartoon environment with a realistic dog.
4) a cartoon environment with a cartoon
dog. The player could interact with the
puppy by petting the dog, feeding it, playing
fetch, and putting different hats on the dog
to customize it. After the player had
sufficient time to bond with the puppy, a
special treat was spawned in. When the
participant fed the dog the treat, the dog
choked on the treat and collapsed, quivering
until death, which ended the simulation. The
dog’s death was purposefully designed to be
partly caused by the participant, which was
intended to cause guilt and thus increase the
emotional impact on the player. The
participant’s emotional reaction was then
assessed.
The participants for this study were
college age students randomly selected.
They were given a pretest survey with basic
demographic data such as age and gender as
well as whether they owned a pet or not. The
post-test survey had the players rating the
simulation. The players were asked to rate
the interactivity of the simulation, their own
perceived attachment to the virtual dog, how
uncomfortable the dog made them feel, and
their own emotional distress reaction to the
dog’s death. Observation was also used to
determine a player’s emotional reaction.
4. Results
An ANOVA test was first conducted
to determine whether the emotional response
from each group was different enough from
one another. It was determined that there
was enough evidence to support that the
average emotional reaction for each group
were not equal with a 95% confidence.
After confirming the ANOVA test
results, four 2-tailed T-tests were conducted
to test four hypothesis: (1) Different style of
dog will have an impact to emotional
response in a realistic environment, (2)
Different style of dog will have an impact to
emotional response in a toon environment.
(3) Different style of environment will have
an impact to emotional response with a
realistic dog, (4) Different style of
environment will have an impact to
4
emotional response with a toon dog. The
results determined (1) and (2) null
hypothesis were not rejected, while (3) and
(4) were rejected. From this, it was
determined that having different style of
environment could potentially have an
impact on the emotional response with a
90% confidence, while having different
types of dog, but the same environment, did
not result in much change to the emotional
response.
5. Discussion and Limitations
There were several limitations to the
study which were minor in and of
themselves but could have caused some
discrepancies in the results. One of the
limitations was the quality of interaction.
There were only four actions that the player
could perform with their virtual pet which
were petting, feeding, playing fetch, and
putting on a hat. The simulation would have
benefited from additional interactions such
as grooming, walking, and other such
common actions that people bond over pets
with as well as naming the dog, which
would have increased the immersion and
emotional attachment that the player had
with the pet. Another limitation was the
realism of the environment itself. A possible
explanation to why the cartoon environment
was favored was that the “realistic”
environment was not realistic enough,
possibly reducing immersion as players
settled into the “uncanny valley.”
The quality of the animations likely
was also a factor in the participants’
emotional investment. Higher quality
animations would serve to increase the
realism of the dog’s behavior and
strengthened the player’s bond.
6. Conclusion and Future Work
Future studies could expand upon
this research by testing additional pet and
environment models. This study tested dog
and environment models that were
categorized as either realistic or cartoon, but
there are a variety of other styles that can be
found somewhere in the middle of this scale
that have yet to be explored. In addition to
exploring other points on the realism scale,
there are other stylistic choices that could
have an effect on the player’s emotional
reactivity. Perhaps a robotic dog could be
used to determine whether the player would
develop the same bond with a dog that is not
‘alive’ in the traditional sense. Alternatively,
a dog that looks creepy or evil could be
tested to determine whether this would cause
players to have negative feelings towards the
dog. There could also be additional
environment styles. Perhaps different
realistic styles such as a typical apartment
versus a mansion could be tested to
determine whether the player feels a
stronger emotional connection when they
are in an environment that more closely
resembles their own home.
This study determined that players
are able to form an emotional attachment to
a virtual dog regardless of whether the dog
appeared in a realistic or cartoon style. This
provides the information that realism is not
required to create an experience that
provokes a strong emotional reaction. In
fact, participants presented with a cartoon
environment showed a stronger emotional
5
reaction to the dog’s death. Depending on
the type of experience being developed,
realism may still be wanted by developers,
but knowing that it is not required to achieve
the desired reaction from the player is
valuable information that allows the
developers to have more freedom when it
comes to stylistic choices.
7. References
Bates, J. (1994). The role of emotion in
believable agents. ​Communications of the
ACM,​ ​37(​ 7), 122-125.
Brown, E., Cairns, P. ​A Grounded
Investigation of Immersion.​ In Proc.
CHI2004, ACM Press (2004)
https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2017/03/15/c
an-we-really-expect-gaming-graphics-to-get
-any-better/
Sacco, D. (2015, August 25). How long until
8K and 16K gaming become the norm?
Retrieved from
https://www.pcr-online.biz/retail/how-long-
until-8k-and-16k-gaming-become-the-norm
Thorn, P., Howell, T. J., Brown, C., &
Bennett, P. C. (2015). ​The Canine Cuteness
Effect: Owner-perceived cuteness as a
predictor of human–dog relationship
quality.​ Anthrozoös, 28(4), 569-585.

Cheng, K., Cairns, P. ​Behaviour, realism

and immersion in games​, CHI '05 Extended
Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR,
USA

Czsentmihalyi M. ​Flow: The Psychology of

Optimal Experience​. Harper Perennial, 1990

Ellingsen, K., Zanella, A. J., Bjerkås, E., &

Indrebø, A. (2010). ​The relationship
between empathy, perception of pain and
attitudes toward pets among Norwegian dog
owners​. Anthrozoös, 23(3), 231-243.

Gosse, G. H., & Barnes, M. J. (1994).

Human grief resulting from the death of a
pet.​ Anthrozoös, 7(2), 103-112.

Phillips, Cassie, C. (2017, March 16). Can

We Really Expect Gaming Graphics to Get
Any Better? Retrieved from