Investigation of How Animal Avatar Affects Users’ Self-Disclosure and Subjective Responses in One-on-One Interactions in VR Space

In social VR, users can communicate with others through their avatars, and their appearance can be customized. In communication using avatars, previous research revealed that avatars with dissimilar appearances to the user encourage greater self-disclosure than avatars with similar appearances. This study focused on non-humanoid animal avatars because they have dissimilar appearances to users and also have other positive effects (e.g., promoting intimacy), so they are expected to promote self-disclosure. In our previous research, we propose a one-on-one communication system in which the user and the interlocutor use animal avatars in a VR space to investigate the effects of animal avatars on the users’ self-disclosure. The system converts the users’ movements acquired by the sensors mounted on the HMD and the controllers into the movements of the animal avatar and transmits them to the interlocutor. In this study, we conducted an experiment using the proposed system to investigate the effect of the avatars’ appearance on users’ self-disclosure and subjective responses. Experimental results showed that the proposed system did not promote users’ self-disclosure, which was expected as an effect of the animal avatars. However, in the other items, intimacy with the interlocutor and perceived attractiveness of their own avatars were improved.