Willem-Paul Brinkman, Charles van der Mast, Fatma Inan. A Virtual Environment to Create Social Situations: First Step to a VRET System for Social Phobia. In Euromedia 2009 April 15-17 Bruges Belgium. pages 103-107, Eurosis-ETIS, Ostend Belgium, apr 2009.
This paper describes a study to examine how a social situation can be simulated in a virtual environment, and how to provoke the same behavioral response as in a real life social situation. The aim is to create new Virtual Reality worlds for treating social phobia. Two cases were examined in a virtual environment to assess whether it was able to recreate social behavior of people. First, we examined if participants who enter a crowded room in the virtual environment prefer to take a seat in a chair that is close to them. Secondly, we investigated if participants in the virtual environment have the tendency to physically distance themselves from strangers when choosing a seat in a room full of strangers. We conclude that a social situation can be recreated in a virtual world.