3 - (OP17) Validating Virtual Reality Environments for the Study of Emotional Responses to Stressful Events

Trauma and moral injury have largely relied on retrospective self-report, limiting insight into real-time emotional and cognitive responses. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising experimental alternative by allowing ethically controlled, immersive simulations of psychologically meaningful events. The present study developed and validated two novel scenarios depicting a life-threatening event and a combined moral transgression and life-threatening event.
Undergraduate participants (N = 138; Mage = 19.49 years, SD = 3.77; 67.4% female) recruited from the University of Ottawa were randomly assigned to one of four conditions defined by experience (VR vs. video) and event type (moral transgression + life threat vs. life threat only). Participants completed a series of self-report measures to assess emotional intensity and responses (i.e., guilt and shame), perceived morality and responsibility, immersion, presence, and trauma-related guilt related to the experience/event. It was hypothesized that VR would elicit greater immersion, presence, and emotional intensity than video and that moral transgression scenarios would elicit greater perceived morality, personal responsibility, guilt, shame and trauma-related guilt than life-threat only scenarios.
Bayesian two-way ANOVAs were used to examine the hypotheses. VR was found to increase one’s sense of presence relative to video (BFincl = 2.06 × 10⁴) but not immersion or physiological arousal. Moral transgression scenarios elicited greater perceptions of responsibility (BFincl = 2.12 × 10¹⁷) and morality (BFincl = 1.81 × 10¹¹) compared to life-threat only scenarios. There was also moderate evidence for an effect of VR (vs. video) on perceived morality (BFincl = 3.86). Greater emotions of guilt (BFincl = 1.14 × 10⁴) and shame (BFincl = 723.10) were found in the moral transgression scenarios compared to life-threat only scenarios. Trauma-related guilt was elevated in the moral transgression scenarios delivered in VR (BFincl = 5.87) than in the video version and both life-threat only conditions.
Together, these findings suggest that VR enhances psychological realism primarily by increasing presence and can elicit trauma-related guilt and morality in moral transgression scenarios. This work lays the foundation for future research using VR environments to study moral transgressions and life-threatening events, and in bridging basic research on emotions and moral decision-making with clinical research on trauma and moral injury.