Studying the Influence of Single Social Interactions on Approach and Avoidance Behavior – A Multimodal Investigation in Immersive Virtual Reality

When studying spontaneous or learned emotional responses to social stimuli, research has traditionally relied on simplified stimuli repeatedly presented on a computer screen in standardized laboratory environments. While these studies provided important insights into social perception and cognition, their restricted ecological validity may impede the extrapolation of findings to everyday social contexts. Here we developed a novel immersive virtual reality scenario that permits the examination of social approach- and avoidance behavior under naturalistic circumstances while at the same time maintaining full experimental control. Using a combination of a social conditioning procedure with a social approach-avoidance test, we conducted two experiments (both with N = 48 female participants) to investigate how individuals differing in trait social anxiety adapt their behavior after a single encounter with an either friendly or unfriendly virtual agent. In addition to overt approach and avoidance behavior, we acquired subjective ratings, eye-tracking data and autonomic responses. Overall, we observed significant effects of the social conditioning procedure on autonomic responses and participants’ exploration behavior. After initial hypervigilance, participants exhibited avoidance of social threats as indicated by a higher interpersonal distance and decreased visual attention towards the negatively conditioned virtual agent in the test phase. We found no association between hypervigilance and trait social anxiety, but observed higher fear ratings and enhanced avoidance of social threats in participants with elevated anxiety levels. Altogether, this study demonstrates the potential of immersive virtual environments for examining social learning processes under conditions resembling real-life social encounters.