A plastic virtual self

Abstract

This chapter discusses how virtual reality (VR) has been used to elicit body ownership illusions and their consequences for transformation of cognitive processes, attitudes, behaviours, and physiological responses, including pain. We review how VR can be used to engender body ownership over a virtual body that is seen from first-person perspective. The virtual body is programmed to move synchronously with participant movements or be seen to receive tactile stimulation while the participant feels this synchronously on their body. We show that body ownership occurs over a wide range of body forms, even those that go beyond the appearance of humans. We then consider the consequences of ownership over a virtual body with characteristics that are different from the person’s actual body. For example, a different race will typically lead to a reduction of implicit bias against that race, or a certain physical aspect may influence motor behaviours of the participant, and even physiological responses. We also show that ownership over a virtual body can lead to illusory agency, that is the sense that the participant might have of carrying out an action that only their virtual body did. Overall, we demonstrate that VR is an excellent tool for the study of body representation, and that it can be used to induce rapid changes across a number of dimensions from attitudes through to pain perception. We finish with the question – if our body representation is so highly plastic, then who are we?