In Preparation | Virtual Identification with a Cancer Patient Increases Self-Examination Intentions

Abstract | This experiment investigated the effect viewing the VR 360 documentary The Waiting Room (TWR) had on viewers’ sense of identity, mortality salience and health examination behaviour. TWR is filmed in an ambiguous style in which viewers are positioned in a viewpoint that is close to, but not identical to, the film’s subject and director, Victoria Mappelbeck (VM), in a scene that recreates her radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer. The current study manipulated the match between the viewers’ posture at that of VM to examine the effect on sense of identity with the documentary subject. Eighty female participants either sitting upright with the chair back set at a 90° angle (consistent with camera “posture”) or reclining with the chair back set at a 140° angle (consistent with VMs posture) watched the documentary and the effect of posture type was measured explicitly using questionnaires on presence, empathy, identity and health examination but also implicitly using terror management theory tasks. There were no effects of posture on terror management however participants reported higher spatial presence in the lying down position. However, those who identified with Victoria were more likely to indicate that they would carry out breast examination. The implications of these results for using VR as a behaviour change tool, the effects of the pandemic on the terror management manipulation and the relevance of spatial viewpoint in VR are discussed.