Presence in Virtual Art Environments Affects the Perception of Novel Affordances in Real-World Objects

In this research, we examined if immersion in a virtual art environment influences creative performance. Specifically, we tested if immersing oneself in virtuality-based (having no real-world counterparts) VR art exhibitions affects one’s creativity in the art non-relevant task, in no specific creative domain, and outside the virtual environment. In this study, we identified creative performance with the perception of novel affordances, and we operationalized it by the number of responses regarding the uncommon uses of directly perceived objects. A total of 162 young adults participated in the study and were assigned to three conditions: a VR active condition, a VR passive condition (watching the recordings from the VR active condition), or a control condition without any VR involvement. Participants immersed in virtual art exhibitions gave more uncommon responses, so perceived more novel affordances in objects, than those in VR passive condition and control condition. These findings contribute to research on embodied creativity as well as to positive cyberpsychology, as they confirm the previously demonstrated creativity-boost effects of VR—this time, however, by proving this under conditions of perceptual access to real-world objects.