A 3D virtual environment for empirical research on social pain: Enhancing fidelity and anthropomorphism in the study of feelings of ostracism inclusion and overinclusion

The traditional Cyberball paradigm is a 2D virtual ball-toss game that uses line drawn characters for research on ostracism. Using this paradigm, studies have reported increased level of distress during the exclusion condition. While the 2D Cyberball was developed purposefully to be minimal, it lacks the ecological validity that many virtual environments now offer. For this study, we developed a virtual reality-based Cyberball paradigm with highly anthropomorphic avatars, in line with other studies and with 3 conditions (Inclusion, Exclusion and Overinclusion). In an effort to assess the impact of increased fidelity and anthropomorphism in the CyberballAvatar3D paradigm, the overall objective of this study is to compare the changes in mood between the 3 steps of original 2D low anthropomorphism Cyberball and our new high-anthropomorphism CyberballAvatar3D in a sample of undergraduate students.