Investigating proxemics between avatars in virtual reality

Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) is being used in a large variety of areas nowadays. To take advantage of VR systems and use them as the substitutions of the physical world in social research, it is necessary to verify that results from experiments in virtual environments are coherent with those expected in the real world. In this study, proxemics was selected to establish consistency between virtual environments (VE) and real environments (RE). Proxemics is a branch of study about personal space and its effects on human behavior. This study mainly focused on the following aspects in proxemics: personal space theory, gender effect on interpersonal distance perception, equilibrium theory, and conversation status effect on mutual gaze. 34 participants (19M:15F) were recruited for the experiment. During the experiment, participants were asked to play the Twenty Questions game in groups of two in both VE and RE. Meanwhile, eye gaze data and interpersonal distance perception ratings were collected. The results were as followed. 1) As in personal space theory, participants associated the same interpersonal relationships with specific interpersonal distances, 2) gender did not have significant effect on personal space, 3) as in equilibrium theory, distance had significant effect on mutual gaze duration, but only when comparing mutual gaze duration under the intimate distance and other distances, 4) and there were more mutual gaze occurring when the dyad was in conversation as concluded from other studies. Causes and limitations in this study were discussed later to address the inconsistency between this study and the corresponding theories.