Enhancing Positive Emotions through Interactive Virtual Reality Experiences: An EEG-Based Investigation

Virtual reality (VR), as an immersive interactive technology, holds the potential to promote feelings of well-being by evoking positive emotions. However, the underlying causes and extent of emotional responses elicited by VR remain underexplored. Accordingly, we aimed to investigate the types of interaction behaviors in VR that effectively enhance positive emotions, using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals as measurements of emotional expressions. In an exploratory study conducted on a virtual museum (N = 22), we designed four interactive tasks with varying user autonomy and interaction functions. An individual emotion model based on EEG was employed to predict the promotion of positive emotions and its extent. The results indicated that simply roaming the virtual museum had no obvious impact on positive emotions. However, incorporating specific interaction functions such as doodles, emojis, and comments increased positive emotions, with the extent of the increase closely linked to the degree of user autonomy.