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Meditating in Virtual Reality 2: Phenomenology of Vividness, Egocentricity and Absorption-Immersion

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Abstract

Objectives

The current study was designed to replicate and extend previous findings that demonstrate the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) technology to facilitate salient experiences of positive affect and wellbeing in response to meditative tasks, by (1) evaluating the phenomenological variables vividness, egocentricity, and immersiveness, as mediators of variability in positive affective response, and by (2) evaluating individual differences in trait absorption as a predictor of variability in positive affective response.

Methods

The current experiment included 48 undergraduate students, all of whom completed both a brief VR and non-VR guided meditation session. Participants self-reported affective and meditative responses after each session using a battery of questionnaires.

Results

Participants experienced greater positive affect in response to VR versus non-VR guided meditation. Further, higher positive affect in response to VR meditation was (1) partially mediated by the experience of higher immersiveness, which was partially mediated by the experience of higher egocentricity in turn, and (2) predicted by higher trait absorption.

Conclusions

Guided meditation in VR is associated with increased positive affect in comparison to non-VR meditation partly due to its effects on egocentricity and immersiveness, especially among participants high in trait absorption.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychiatry & Psychology, Western University, London, Canada

    Melissa Miller, Divya Mistry & Paul Frewen

  2. Department of National Defense (Canada), Ottawa, Canada

    Rakesh Jetly

Authors
  1. Melissa Miller
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  2. Divya Mistry
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  3. Rakesh Jetly
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  4. Paul Frewen
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Contributions

MM: Co-executed the study, assisted with the data analyses, and wrote first draft of the manuscript as an honors independent study project supervised by PF. DV: Co-executed the study, collaborated in the writing and editing of the final manuscript. RJ: collaborated in the writing and editing of the final manuscript. PF: Designed and supervised MM and DV in the execution of the study, completed data analyses, wrote subsequent and final drafts of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Frewen.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethics Statement

The research is described herein received approval from the Health Sciences Research Ethics Board of Western University, Canada.

Informed Consent Statement

All participants provided written informed consent prior to tasking part in this research.

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Miller, M., Mistry, D., Jetly, R. et al. Meditating in Virtual Reality 2: Phenomenology of Vividness, Egocentricity and Absorption-Immersion. Mindfulness 12, 1195–1207 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01589-y

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