April 11, 2008
VR for Paranoia
Research, funded by the Wellcome Trust and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, demonstrates that suspicious or paranoid thoughts are much more common in the general population than was previously thought and that they are almost as common as anxiety and depression. Until now, researchers have been unable to study paranoia in laboratory settings, instead relying on questionnaires, which can be inaccurate.
Using a virtual reality subway ride, researchers studied 200 volunteers broadly representative of the general population walked around a virtual London subway car in a four-minute journey between station stops. The car contained neutral computer people (avatars) that breathed, looked around, and sometimes met the gaze of the participants. One avatar read a newspaper, another would occasionally smile if looked at. A soundtrack of a train was played.
The researchers found that the participants interpreted the same computer characters very differently. The most common reaction was to find the virtual reality characters friendly or neutral, but almost 40 per cent of the participants experienced at least one paranoid thought. The participants were extensively assessed before entering the train ride, and it was found that those who were anxious, worried, focused on the worst-case scenarios and had low self-esteem were the most likely to have paranoid thoughts.
According to lead author, Daniel Freedman, ‘in the past, only those with a severe mental illness were thought to experience paranoid thoughts, but now we know that this is simply not the case. About one-third of the general population regularly experience persecutory thoughts. This shouldn’t be surprising. At the heart of all social interactions is a vital judgment whether to trust or mistrust, but it is a judgment that is error-prone. We are more likely to make paranoid errors if we are anxious, ruminate and have had bad experiences from others in the past.’
Dr Freeman believes that paranoid thoughts are more likely to develop in settings such as on public transport, where people can feel trapped and observed, and cannot hear what others are saying. People who feared terrorism on the subway tended to report more paranoid thoughts in the virtual train. However, the researchers also found that people who regularly used the subway experienced less paranoid thoughts in the virtual train.
Press release from King's College, London
Abstract - British Journal of Psychiatry
Posted by rsk at April 11, 2008 10:58 PM