Transformation to a bird: overcoming the height of fear by inducing the proteus effect of the bird avatar

Abstract

Body ownership illusion can lead to give a user a feeling of becoming an avatar as if it was their own body. Furthermore, existing studies have reported that an avatar's appearance can affect a user's behavior, attitude and mental condition. Almost all studies thus far have been focused on a human-like avatar, not that of an animal avatar. Unlike a human, it can be expected that the bird avatar can leads to give psychological effects in a flight experience, because a bird has flight ability. Our previous study reported that the bird avatar enhances the sense of flight significantly (i.e. participants feel as though they are flying in the sky.) than a human avatar in a flight experience. In this present work, we investigate about changes in attitudes with the fear of heights. We conduct experiments where an avatar is raised to a specific altitude after inducing the sense of body ownership. There are no significant differences between conditions. However, the bird avatar is rated higher than control condition in some questionnaire items. In particular, becoming a bird avatar decreases the subjective fear of heights.