Emotionally overheated social media discussions cause many harms both to the individuals participating in the discussion and to the wider society. To support emotion regulation in social media discussions, the strategy of affect labelling is explored. Two experiments were run to study the effects of emotion labels presented with social media messages on participants’ emotional responses to the messages. Altogether 84 participants read emotional social media messages presented without and with emotion labels (Experiment 1, N = 39), and without labels and with emotion / control labels (Experiment 2, N = 45) and rated their subjective emotional valence. Results show that the ratings of valence were significantly higher for the positive messages presented with label than for the messages presented as such without emotion label or presented with a control label. In addition, the results of the second experiment show that the negative social media messages were experienced as more negative when the messages were presented with an emotion label than without emotion label or with control label. The results suggest that affect labelling of social media messages is an ineffective strategy to down-regulate emotions but could be used to support and strengthen positive emotions.

Technologies for Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality (VR, MR, and AR) allow to artificially augment social interactions and thus to go beyond what is possible in real life. Motivations for the use of social augmentations are manifold, for example, to synthesize behavior when sensory input is missing, to provide additional affordances in shared environments, or to support inclusion and training of individuals with social communication disorders. We review and categorize augmentation approaches and propose a software architecture based on four data layers. Three components further handle the status analysis, the modification, and the blending of behaviors. We present a prototype (injectX) that supports behavior tracking (body motion, eye gaze, and facial expressions from the lower face), status analysis, decision-making, augmentation, and behavior blending in immersive interactions. Along with a critical reflection, we consider further technical and ethical aspects.

We examined the effects of the emotional facial expressions of a virtual character (VC) on human frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry (putatively indexing approach/withdrawal motivation), facial electromyographic (EMG) activity (emotional expressions), and social decision making (cooperation/defection). In a within-subjects design, the participants played the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game with VCs with different dynamic facial expressions (predefined or dependent on the participant's electrodermal and facial EMG activity). In general, VC facial expressions elicited congruent facial muscle activity. However, both frontal EEG asymmetry and facial EMG activity elicited by an angry VC facial expression varied as a function of preceding interactional events (human collaboration/defection). Pre-decision inner emotional-motivational processes and emotional facial expressions were dissociated, suggesting that human goals influence pre-decision frontal asymmetry, whereas display rules may affect (pre-decision) emotional expressions in human-VC interaction. An angry VC facial expression, high pre-decision corrugator EMG activity, and relatively greater left frontal activation predicted the participant's decision to defect. Both post-decision frontal asymmetry and facial EMG activity were related to reciprocal cooperation. The results suggest that the justifiability of VC emotional expressions and the perceived fairness of VC actions influence human emotional responses.

In this paper, we present SIAM-C, an avatar-mediated communication platform to study socially immersive interaction in virtual environments. The proposed system is capable of tracking, transmitting, representing body motion, facial expressions, and voice via virtual avatars and inherits the transmission of human behaviors that are available in real-life social interactions. Users are immersed using active stereoscopic rendering projected onto a life-size projection plane, utilizing the concept of “fish tank” virtual reality (VR). Our prototype connects two separate rooms and allows for socially immersive avatar-mediated communication in VR.

This paper introduces a low-cost framework capable of combining both real-time markerless face and body tracking for faithful avatar embodiment in Virtual Reality (VR). We discuss suitable hardware and software solutions and present a first prototype. This work lays the technological basis for further research on the importance of the appearance and behavioral realism of avatars, e.g., for the illusion of virtual body ownership, for social interactions in VR, as well as for VR entertainment applications (immersive games or movies).

In this paper, we compare a full body marker set with a reduced rigid body marker set supported by inverse kinematics. We measured system latency, illusion of virtual body ownership, and task load in an applied scenario for inducing acrophobia. While not showing a significant change in body ownership or task performance, results do show that latency and task load are reduced when using the rigid body inverse kinematics solution. The approach therefore has the potential to improve virtual reality experiences.

In this paper, we describe an experimental method to investigate the effects of reduced social information and behavioral channels in immersive virtual environments with full-body avatar embodiment. We compared physical-based and verbal-based social interactions in real world (RW) and virtual reality (VR). Participants were represented by abstract avatars that did not display gaze, facial expressions or social cues from appearance. Our results show significant differences in terms of presence and physical performance. However, differences in effectiveness in the verbal task were not present. Participants appear to efficiently compensate for missing social and behavioral cues by shifting their attentions to other behavioral channels.

In this paper, we present a avatar-mediated communication platform for socially immersive interaction in virtual reality (VR). Our approach is based on the combination of body tracking, facial expression tracking and "fishtank" VR. Our prototype enables two remote users to communicate via avatars.

Reputation scores and seller photos are regarded as two types of signals promoting trust in e-commerce. Little is known about their differential impact when co-occurring in online transactions. Using a computer-mediated trust game, the current study combined three photo conditions (trustworthy, untrustworthy and no seller photo) with three reputation conditions (positive, negative and no seller reputation) in a 3×3 within-subject design. Buyers' ratings of trust and number of purchases served as dependent variables. Significant main effects were found for reputation scores and photos on both dependent variables and there was no interaction effect. Trustworthy photos and positive reputation contributed towards buyers' trust and higher purchase rates. Surprisingly, neither untrustworthy photos nor negative reputation performed worse than missing information. On the contrary, completely missing information (no reputation, no photo) led to distrust and differed significantly from completely negative information (low reputation, untrustworthy photo), which resulted in a neutral trust level. Overall, the data suggest that not only does positive information increase trust, but mere uncertainty reduction regarding a seller can also contribute towards trust in online transactions.