In organizational and team decision-making, it is critical for each member to engage in discussions from a broader perspective, without fixating on their personal values and knowledge. Self-distancing has been proposed as a means of supporting such a perspective; however, its role in multiparty group discussions with decision-making remains underexplored. We applied self-distancing to immersive virtual environments to examine its effects on group decision-making. A total of 144 participants (48 triads, aged 20–49) experienced two types of decision-making tasks under either a self-distanced perspective, observing their self-avatar from behind, or a self-immersed perspective, observing it from the first person. The results showed that embodied self-distancing significantly affected decision-making quality (improved consensus agreement and opinion inference accuracy), communication behavior (increased gestures regulating conversational flow), and group members’ perceptions (reduced intragroup conflict and affective interdependence). Overall, embodied self-distancing may be suitable for situations that require the prevention or mitigation of conflict but less suitable for situations that require empathy and attentive listening.

Considering the importance of self-disclosure in building relationships, it is vital to understand how people self-disclose when using communication media in cyberspace. By comparing four communication media (face-to-face, video, and embodied virtual reality (VR) with realistic/unrealistic avatars), we investigated the extent to which people self-disclose through video and embodied VR and how the gender pairing between the people disclosing and being disclosed to affects this. We analysed 144 participants (72 dyads) discussing personal topics. The results showed no noticeable difference in the degree of self-disclosure between video and face-to-face. The results also showed that embodied VR, especially with unrealistic avatars, facilitated more self-disclosure on personal feelings than face-to-face, whereas subjective experiences differed little between embodied VR and face-to-face. The gender pairing affected self-disclosure, with the female-to-female pairing having the highest degree of self-disclosure across many measures, regardless of the communication medium, particularly the disclosure of personal information. Furthermore, the higher degree of self-disclosure on personal feelings in embodied VR above was mainly because of the higher degree of self-disclosure by users who disclosed to a male. Potential explanations and implications are discussed.

This study explores how gaze visualization in virtual spaces facilitates the initiation of informal communication. Three styles of gaze cue visualization (arrow, bubbles, and miniature avatar) with two types of gaze behavior (one-sided gaze and joint gaze) were evaluated. 96 participants used either a non-visualized gaze cue or one of the three visualized gaze cues. The results showed that all visualized gaze cues facilitated the initiation of informal communication more effectively than the non-visualized gaze cue. For one-sided gaze, overall, bubbles had more positive effects on the gaze receiver's behaviors and experiences than the other two visualized gaze cues, although the only statistically significant difference was in the verbal reaction rates. For joint gaze, all three visualized gaze cues had positive effects on the receiver's behaviors and experiences. The design implications of the gaze visualization and the confederate-based evaluation method contribute to research on informal communication and social virtual reality.

Considering the importance of self-disclosure in building relationships, it is vital to investigate how self-disclosure is affected via avatars in virtual environments, as they are likely to become increasingly popular. Previous work has shown that using avatars increases friendliness and honesty. However, issues such as how and what types of avatars affect self-disclosure and reciprocity have not been fully explored. We conducted a study with 108 participants (54 dyads) discussing a personal topic using one of three communication media: videoconferencing, avatars with avatar-self appearance similarity, or avatars without avatar-self appearance similarity. The results showed that self-disclosure is most encouraged via the avatars without similarity. Reciprocity was formed via both types of avatars but not videoconferencing. Interestingly, although the participants disclosed more about themselves via avatars than via videoconferencing, there was no difference in their subjective experiences. It means that avatar users can disclose more about themselves without being particularly aware that they are using avatars, which suggests the usefulness of avatars to understand people's candid thoughts and feelings. Finally, we discuss the design implications for applications requiring self-disclosure.