In collaboration with the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava, a research project has been launched here that focuses on how people react to fear in a virtual environment. The research addresses the question of whether a virtual spider can appear realistic enough to evoke genuine fear in a person.
The research team focused on arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders. In a virtual reality setting, participants were gradually exposed to spiders, with variations in their proximity, number, and the degree of interaction required. This made it possible to safely and systematically observe how people react to a situation that is unpleasant for them, yet takes place in a precisely controlled digital environment.
The Department of Computer Science was primarily involved in the technological aspects of the project. This included working with the virtual environment, integrating the VR scenario with measurement technology, and processing various types of data. During the experiment, researchers monitored not only what participants themselves described as feelings of fear or anxiety, but also their physiological reactions. For example, they measured heart rate, sweating, breathing, and cortisol levels in saliva.
“Virtual reality allows us to create a situation that is sufficiently intense for the participant, yet safe and precisely controllable. Thanks to the integration of VR, sensors, and data analysis, we can monitor not only what a person says they are experiencing, but also how their body reacts to a given stimulus,” explains Michal Krumnikl from the Department of Computer Science.
This collaboration naturally brings together computer science, psychology, and behavioral research. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava provides an expert perspective on the experience of fear and the application of psychological methods, while the Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEI) of VŠB–TUO provides the technological solutions, virtual reality applications, and the data analysis component of the experiment.
It is precisely this combination of VR, sensors, and data analysis that demonstrates the wide range of applications computer science has today. It allows us to create environments in which we can safely simulate situations that are difficult to control, observe human reactions, and better understand how people perceive the virtual world. This approach can be important not only for psychological research and the treatment of phobias, but also for other fields where technology is used to study human behavior, emotions, and physical reactions.