Negative Emotions From Virtual Reality Usage: A Preliminary Exploratory Study Using Online Forums

As the virtual reality (VR) industry continues to grow, it becomes important to understand how individuals interact with VR in their everyday settings. The physical effects of VR such as fatigue are well-known, but research on emotional effects is not as common. This study aimed to explore VR head-mounted display users’ negative emotions regarding at-home VR usage. Examining 140 forum posts (with 118 from Reddit), the emotions, activities, and suggestions were extracted from the posts. The emotions were classified based on Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. Thematic analysis was used in coding posters’ activities and suggestions. The results suggest fear is the most common category of negative emotion experienced by posters. This work could help generate research questions to further examine VR use in naturalistic settings. Future work can include studies with a larger scope, extracting posts from a longer timeline and with fewer inclusion criteria.