Automated Inference of Social Anxiety From Behavior in Social Virtual Reality: Cross-Sectional Observational Study

In dyadic interactions in social VR, social anxiety was associated with behavioral and physiological modulations similar to those observed in face-to-face interactions, indicating heightened social stress and submissiveness even in avatar-mediated communication. Patterns were similar for heightened psychopathology and reversed for verticality, indicating that these traits may lie on a shared social-behavioral spectrum. Extending previous research focused on face-to-face interactions or reactions toward artificial agents displayed in VR, this study is the first to provide a comprehensive account of the behavioral and physiological modulations associated with social anxiety in avatar-based human-human interactions. Since social VR setups allow researchers to assess a rich set of behavioral data as a byproduct of the setup's core functionality, the technique opens novel possibilities to detect social stress, track therapeutic progress, or tailor interventions to individual behavior when interactions take place in VR.