Non-technical influences on the experience of presence in virtual reality

'Presence' describes the subjective experience of being physically and mentally present somewhere. According to Triberti et al. (2025), presence is a fundamental aspect of human perception. Technical aids such as virtual reality (VR) can be used to manipulate and study presence, as they make it possible to employ consistent visual and acoustic stimuli. A classic example of presence in VR is the 'virtual plank'. Participants are asked to balance on a virtual plank extending from the roof of a skyscraper over a deep abyss. Although participants know the plank is virtual, they hesitate to step onto it and experience the physiological sensations of fear, such as tingling in their feet and an increased heart rate (Wilkinson et al., 2021). While factors influencing presence have often been studied with a strong focus on immersion (i.e. the technical components of a system; Slater, 2018), the non-technical aspects have been underrepresented (Ciarmoli et al., 2024). The current project will address this imbalance by addressing the question: What is the influence of non-technical contextual associations on presence in VR? More specifically, the current project focuses on the influence of contextual associations induced through narrative stories and/or figurative representations of virtual objects associated with the fantasy genre. For the manipulation of the narrative, two different sets of instructions will be used (between-subjects design). These instructions will be presented in the form of a video (double-blind study), featuring either a fantasy background story (experimental group) or instructions referencing a psychology experiment (control group). A semantic differential will be used as a manipulation check. It is expected that the experimental group will give higher ratings to the target adjectives (associated with fantasy) than the control group. With regard to presence, it is hypothesized that instructions congruent with the associations provided by the context (through game objects) in the VR environment (fantasy) will have a positive effect. Hypothesis 1: A genre-congruent instruction increases presence compared to a neutral instruction. To manipulate the figurative level, the same VR environment will be used again, but with additional task-relevant stimuli added to the familiar stimuli from the first trial. These new stimuli will not have any clear association with the fantasy theme (e.g., a rubber duck). It is expected that these new stimuli will have different effects on presence in the two groups. The irritation elicited should be greater in the experimental group than in the control group; accordingly, the reverse effect is expected. Hypothesis 2: Genre-inconsistent stimuli will reduce presence in the experimental group compared to the control group. Presence will be operationalized using a mixed-method approach: Alongside the presence questionnaire (ITC-SOPI; Lessiter et al., 2001), retrospective interviews and objective performance measures will be used (e.g., reaction times in reference to a game object). This also addresses the limited construct validity of questionnaire data, which is a common topic of discussion in presence research (Grassini & Laumann, 2020; Kukshinov et al., 2025).