Social Influences of Virtual Characters in Virtual Reality-Based Industrial Training: Sense of Being Watched, Social Pressure, and Complacency

The study reported in this paper examines the social influences caused by virtual characters in virtual- reality-based training. The adoption of virtual reality (VR) has becoming more common in professional and industrial training. In addition to simulating the workplace environments and task-related tools, virtual characters are often placed in the VR environment to make the environment more natural. However, virtual characters may have social influences on trainees (like real human does), which is one of the often overlooked aspects in VR-based industrial training. We conducted an exploratory study with 42 participants performing industrial tasks in VR while being observed by varying numbers of virtual characters within the VR environment. Our findings revealed that the presence of virtual characters, even though they were fake and not controlled by real humans, could influence participants’ stress levels as the number of virtual characters increased. Interestingly, this influence could also indirectly enhance participants’ perceived task performance with the perceived realism of the virtual environment as a moderator, however, this effect was not observed in the objective performance measure. These results suggest that virtual characters can activate a complacency mechanism in participants. These insights provide valuable guidance for future designs of VR-based training, emphasizing the importance of careful consideration of the placement of virtual characters in such environments.