Transformative Experiences Become More Accessible Through Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) has immersive powers that can teleport an im-mersant into a virtual world and provide them with an experience of being somewhere that they may not have been able to go to. These powers of VR are most often used for games and entertainment, creating a space for escapism and isolation that may have negative psychological and societal outcomes. In this paper, we argue for an opposing application of VR technology - for promoting wellness and feeling of connectedness with people and the world around us. Such feelings can be elicited as a result of a profound awe-inspiring experience, that expands one’s mental model and consequently leads to a positive behavioral change. Such experiences are described as transformative, or in strong cases ’pivotal’. Unfortunately, these experiences are rare, only accessible by some people, and nearly unavailable for researchers interested in studying this phenomenon. The immersive powers of VR present a unique opportunity to reproduce such experiences in the lab or at home, thus making them accessible both to the public and to the researchers. Having real-time access to an experience of the immersant will allow the researchers to study the progression of the tranformative experiences and understand its effects and precursors. In this paper, we are proposing a framework through which transformative experiences can be studied in VR. Understanding this phenomenon will inform how VR experiences should be designed in order to create a positive impact on our society.