Designing awe in virtual reality: an experimental study
Open accessAbstract
Awe is a little-studied emotion with a great transformative potential. Therefore, the interest toward the study of awe's underlying mechanisms has been increased. Specifically, researchers have been interested in how to reproduce intense feelings of awe within laboratory conditions. It has been proposed that the use of virtual reality (VR) could be an effective way to induce awe in controlled experimental settings, thanks to its ability of providing participants with a sense of "presence," that is, the subjective feeling of being displaced in another physical or imaginary place. However, the potential of VR as awe-inducing medium has not been fully tested yet. In the present study, we provided an evidence-based design and a validation of four immersive virtual environments (VEs) involving 36 participants in a within-subject design. Of these, three VEs were designed to induce awe, whereas the fourth VE was targeted as an emotionally neutral stimulus. Participants self-reported the extent to which they felt awe, general affect and sense of presence related to each environment. As expected, results showed that awe-VEs could induce significantly higher levels of awe and presence as compared to the neutral VE. Furthermore, these VEs induced significantly more positive than negative affect. These findings supported the potential of immersive VR for inducing awe and provide useful indications for the design of awe-inspiring virtual environments.
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Experimental and field studies suggest that scaled or simulated awe stimuli can reliably elicit measurable shifts in self-perception and meaning.
“Although such experiences are context-sensitive and not uniformly replicable, experimental and field studies suggest that scaled or simulated awe stimuli can reliably elicit measurable shifts in self-perception and meaning (104, 105).”
From The therapeutic role of self-transcendence in moral injury recovery: theory, mechanisms, and clinical implications (2026) · cites this paper as [104]
The Discussion reports that awe-designed virtual environments elicited significantly more awe than a neutral environment. The Measures and Results sections also report perceived vastness, assessed partly through feelings of smallness and diminished self, with significant differences between conditions. This laboratory study does not establish a shift in meaning or provide field-study evidence. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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Self-citationAwe or horror: differentiating two emotional responses to schema incongruence
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- Authors
- Chirico, A., Ferrise, F., Cordella, L., & Gaggioli, A.
- Affiliations
- Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (IT)
- Politecnico di Milano (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Ferrise, Francesco
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2018-01-22
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 2351-2351
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5786556
- OpenAlex
- W2776596136
- Cited by
- 276
- References
- 89
- Citations by year
- 2026: 34 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 22.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- PubliCatt (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Flow Experience in Various Fields
- Keywords
- awe, virtual reality, immersive virtual environments, presence, emotion induction, affect, virtual environment design
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