Are You Awed Yet? How Virtual Reality Gives Us Awe and Goose Bumps

“Awe” is a category of emotion within the spectrum of self-transcendent experiences. Awe has wellness benefits, with feelings of social interconnectivity and increased life satisfaction. However, awe experiences remain rare in our everyday lives, and rarer in lab environments. We posit that Virtual Reality (VR) may help to make self-transcendent and potentially transformative experiences of awe more accessible to individuals. Here, we investigated how interactive VR as a positive technology may elicit awe, and how features of aesthetic beauty/scale, familiarity, and personalization (self-selection of travel destinations) may induce awe. In this mixed-methods study, participants used an interactive VR system to explore Earth from ground and orbit. We collected: introspective interviews and self-report questionnaires with participants’ experience of awe; information on personality traits and gender; and we recorded physiological goose bumps on the skin (using an arm-mounted goose bump camera instrument), which is a documented marker of an awe experience. Results showed that on a scale of 0–100 for self-reported awe, four different interactive VR environments yielded an average awe rating of 79.7, indicating that interactive VR can indeed induce awe. 43.8% of participants experienced goose bumps: awe ratings positively correlated with the occurrence of goose bumps with those who experienced goose bumps having showed significantly higher ratings of awe than those who did not. Most (64%) of the goose bumps occurred when participants self-selected their VR environment. Participant statements from the interviews were characteristic of an awe-inspiring experience, revealed themes of social connection, and usability problems with the VR interface. Personality traits yielded no clear correlation to awe ratings, and females appear to experience more goose bumps than males. In summary: (1) Interactive VR can elicit awe, especially within familiar, self-selected environments; (2) Physiological goose bumps can be recorded to provide reliable, non-intrusive indications of awe; (3) Care must be taken to design interaction interfaces that do not impede awe; and (4) While personality traits are not correlated to awe ratings, goose bumps were experienced more frequently among females. We aim to conduct future studies using custom VR environments, interfaces, and additional physiological measures to provide further insight into awe

Deep Learning for Classification of Peak Emotions within Virtual Reality Systems

Research has demonstrated well-being benefits from positive, ‘peak’ emotions such as awe and wonder, prompting the HCI community to utilize affective computing and AI modelling for elicitation and measurement of those target emotional states. The immersive nature of virtual reality (VR) content and systems can lead to feelings of awe and wonder, especially with a responsive, personalized environment based on biosignals. However, an accurate model is required to differentiate between emotional states that have similar biosignal input, such as awe and fear. Deep learning may provide a solution since the subtleties of these emotional states and affect may be recognized, with biosignal data viewed in a time series so that researchers and designers can understand which features of the system may have influenced target emotions. The proposed deep learning fusion system in this paper will use data collected from a corpus, created through collection of physiological biosignals and ranked qualitative data, and will classify these multimodal signals into target outputs of affect. This model will be real-time for the evaluation of VR system features which influence awe/wonder, using a bio-responsive environment. Since biosignal data will be collected through wireless, wearable sensor technology, and modelled through the same computer powering the VR system, it can be used in field research and studios

Understanding AWE: Can a Virtual Journey, Inspired by the Overview Effect, Lead to an Increased Sense of Interconnectedness?

Immersive technology, such as virtual reality, provides us with novel opportunities to create and explore affective experiences with a transformative potential mediated through awe. The profound emotion of awe, that is experienced in response to witnessing vastness and creates the need for accommodation that can lead to restructuring of one\u27s worldview and an increased feeling of connectedness. An iconic example of the powers of awe is observed in astronauts who develop instant social consciousness and strong pro-environmental values in response to the overwhelming beauty of Earth observed from space. Here on Earth, awe can also be experienced in response to observing vast natural phenomenon or even sometimes in response to some forms of art, presenting vast beauty to its audience. Can virtual reality provide a new powerful tool for reliably inducing such experiences? What are some unique potentials of this emerging medium? This paper describes the evaluation of an immersive installation “AWE”—Awe-inspiring Wellness Environment. The results indicate that the experience of being in “AWE” can elicit some components of awe emotion and induce minor cognitive shifts in participant\u27s worldview similar to the Overview Effect, while this experience also has its own attributes that might be unique to this specific medium. Comparing the results of this exploratory study to other virtual environments designed to elicit Overview Effect provides insights on the relationship between design features and participant\u27s experience. The qualitative results highlight the importance of perceived safety, personal background and familiarity with the environment, and the induction of a small visceral fear reaction as a part of the emotional arc of the virtual journey—as some of the key contributers to the affective experience of the immersive installation. Even though the observed components of awe and a few indications of cognitive shift support the potential of Virtual Reality as a transformative medium, many more iterations of the design and research tools are required before we can achieve and fully explore a profound awe-inspiring transformative experience mediated through immersive technologies

Space—A Virtual Frontier: How to Design and Evaluate a Virtual Reality Experience of the Overview Effect

A select small group of people have an amazing opportunity to see the Earth from a unique perspective—from space. The effect this experience has on an individual has been described as extraordinary and profound, consisting of a cognitive shift in worldview that leads to a deeper understanding of the fragility and vulnerability of our planet, and an increased feeling of connectedness. This experience, termed the “Overview Effect,” has been reported by many space-travelers. Its key outcome—an enhanced feeling of interconnectedness—contributes to both one’s well-being and the sense of responsibility for the Earth. If this profoundly positive experience could be made accessible to more people than just space-travelers, this might ultimately contribute to a healthier and more caring society, where more individuals deeply feel the interconnection of all living beings and responsibility for our collective future. Given virtual reality (VR) technology’s potential to induce experiences affecting an immersant in a similar way as a real experience, we see an opportunity to leverage this technology to attempt to elicit the Overview Effect as a virtual experience. Through a virtual installation, the experience could be made accessible to people around the world, and for researchers to study this otherwise rare phenomenon. This article builds the case for VR as a tool for inducing and studying the Overview Effect. It reviews the psychological research on the Overview Effect and awe, and proposes guidelines for: (1) the design of VR experiences to elicit an Overview Effect and (2) evaluation methods for assessing if, or to what degree, the experience was achieved. Finally, we discuss existing implementations of the Overview Effect in VR. Thus, we are making an applied contribution in the form of design guidelines, and contributions to knowledge in the form of a review of research related to the Overview Effect. We invite researchers and VR creators to utilize and expand on the guidelines proposed in this paper to design transformative VR experiences that induce positive change, and promote a feeling of connectedness and care for each other, and our Spaceship Earth

Dictionnaire des intellectuel.les au Québec

Qui connaît vraiment les intellectuel.les hors du cercle restreint des historiens et des littéraires ? Quelle mémoire avons-nous de celles et ceux qui, au Québec, eurent recours à la parole comme « mode d'action » ? Qui, comme Hubert Aquin, entreprirent et entreprennent encore de « comprendre dangereusement » la culture et la société de leur époque, remuant idées et images, bousculant pouvoirs et doxa ? Ce dictionnaire est conçu pour combler les lacunes d'une mémoire collective quelque peu défaillante, mais aussi pour donner envie de lire ou de relire les textes de ces femmes et hommes passionnés par les idées, qui ont contribué - et qui contribuent toujours - à bâtir la société québécoise. On y trouvera les noms de celles et ceux qui, depuis trois siècles, interviennent sur la place publique et soulèvent des questions d'intérêt civique et politique à propos d'enjeux collectifs importants ; de celles et ceux qui promeuvent ou incarnent la liberté de parole et la défendent contre différents pouvoirs et structures organisationnelles

Dictionnaire

ACTION FRANÇAISE (1917-1928) / ACTION NATIONALE (1933- ) Lancée une dizaine d’années après l’affaire Dreyfus, L’Action française (AF) de Montréal existe toujours sous le titre L’Action nationale (AN). C’est dire la place de la revue pour l’histoire des intellectuels, d’autant plus qu’au-delà de La Revue canadienne (1864-1922) et des journaux nationalistes du début du siècle – Le Nationaliste (1903) d’Olivar Asselin*, L’Action (1911-1916) de Jules Fournier*, Le Devoir (1910) d’Henri Bourassa* ..