AR Comfort Companions: Exploring the Role of Anthropomorphic Animals in Alleviating Stressful Environments

Anthropomorphic animals have long played significant roles in culture, ranging from educational purposes to serving as brand mascots and virtual identities on social media. Despite their widespread use, their integration into augmented reality (AR) technology remains underexplored. Our research aims to fill this gap by presenting the results of a 3x1 within-subject experimental design study. This study evaluates participant responses to anthropomorphic animals, a virtual human, and a virtual dog in an AR setting. To assess the impact of the experiment on participants and their task performance, a combination of subjective questionnaires, objective metrics and post-experiment interviews was employed. Our findings suggest that anthropomorphic animals in AR environments are not only universally supported, but can significantly reduce stress, task-difficulty perceptions and anxiety in high-stress situations. This opens new possibilities for the use of AR-based anthropomorphic animals in therapeutic or high-stress environments.