The effect of VR game-based biofeedback training on anxiety growth mindset in healthy participants

Biofeedback, wherein people learn to regulate their physiological stress responses, offers a potentially useful approach to managing anxiety. One important question is whether the development of this self-regulation skill might also engender a sense of empowerment in individuals and thus confer resilience in their more long-term attitudes and approaches to anxiety. We sought to determine whether a virtual reality (VR) game-based approach might positively influence participants’ anxiety growth mindset, signifying enhanced confidence in their capacity to manage anxiety. We assessed mindset in 53 healthy adult participants before and after a two-phase VR game-based biofeedback intervention between March and May 2022. This intervention comprised an initial slow-paced breathing training, followed by a subsequent stress-induction in the context of a biofeedback-based game. The biofeedback intervention led to a significant improvement in growth mindset of anxiety, a change that was associated with lower levels of physiological stress response as indexed by heart rate (HR) in the stress-induction game. Our findings show that, in addition to producing an acute effect on the capacity to manage physiological stress responses, experience of a VR biofeedback training package was associated with a significant change in one’s sense of the controllability of anxiety. We suggest that this has long-term potential for benefit through conferring a greater sense of empowerment in managing anxiety.