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Virtually Being Einstein Results in an Improvement in Cognitive Task Performance and a Decrease in Age Bias
Open accessAbstract
The brain's body representation is amenable to rapid change, even though we tend to think of our bodies as relatively fixed and stable. For example, it has been shown that a life-sized body perceived in virtual reality as substituting the participant's real body, can be felt as if it were their own, and that the body type can induce perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral changes. Here we show that changes can also occur in cognitive processing and specifically, executive functioning. Fifteen male participants were embodied in a virtual body that signifies super-intelligence (Einstein) and 15 in a (Normal) virtual body of similar age to their own. The Einstein body participants performed better on a cognitive task than the Normal body, considering prior cognitive ability (IQ), with the improvement greatest for those with low self-esteem. Einstein embodiment also reduced implicit bias against older people. Hence virtual body ownership may additionally be used to enhance executive functioning.
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“in another study we found that when participants are self-represented as Albert Einstein this improved their performance on a cognitive task compared to being represented in an anonymous virtual body of approximately their own age35, at least for participants with low self-esteem.”
From An experimental study of a virtual reality counselling paradigm using embodied self-dialogue (2019) · cites this paper as [35]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Banakou, D., Kishore, S., & Slater, M.
- Affiliations
- Universitat de Barcelona (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Slater, Mel
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2018-06-11
- Volume
- 9
- Pages
- 917-917
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6004376
- OpenAlex
- W2804788713
- Cited by
- 305
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 39 · 2025: 44 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 47 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 22.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-56301-R)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- virtual embodiment, representation of the body, executive function, cognitive task performance, age bias, implicit bias, self-esteem
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