Social pressure: stress responses to virtual humans in immersive virtual job interviews

Abstract Prior research suggests that the attitude of virtual humans, in situations such as job interviews, can influence users’ stress levels. However, the mechanisms through which designers can precisely modulate stress levels in these settings remain unclear. We propose a mechanism for modulating users’ stress levels through multimodal social interactions with virtual humans. These interactions are modulated along two dimensions: friendliness (friendly vs. hostile) and dominance (dominant vs. non-dominant). To test this mechanism, we conducted two studies in which participants interacted with virtual humans that varied in friendliness and dominance. Friendliness was expressed through cues of appreciation or dislike, such as facial expressions (e.g., smiling or frowning) and speech content (e.g., “that’s good!”), whereas dominance was expressed through cues of control or lack of control, such as social rank (i.e., supervisor vs. subordinate) and assertiveness (i.e., giving instructions vs. asking permission). The results indicate that the behavior of the virtual humans plays a role in shaping stress responses; however, the findings reveal a complex relationship and therefore need to be interpreted with caution. In particular, the findings showed that the dominant virtual human was perceived as less friendly than the non-dominant virtual human. Future research should further investigate this effect and consider alternative models that provide more clearly distinguishable and independent control parameters for modulating stress responses in social virtual environments.