Racing heart and sweaty palms: What influences users’ self-assessments and physiological signals when interacting with virtual audiences?

Abstract

In psychotherapy, virtual audiences have been shown to promote successful outcomes when used to help treating public speaking anxiety. Additionally, early experiments have shown its potential to help improve public speaking ability. However, it is still unclear to what extent certain factors, such as audience non-verbal behaviors, impact users when interacting with a virtual audience. In this paper, we design an experimental study to investigate users’ self-assessments and physiological states when interacting with a virtual audience. Our results showed that virtual audience behaviors did not influence participants self-assessments or physiological responses, which were instead predominantly determined by participants’ prior anxiety levels.