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"These are not my hands!": Effect of Gender on the Perception of Avatar Hands in Virtual Reality

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Rendering the user's body in virtual reality increases immersion and presence the illusion of "being there". Recent technology enables determining the pose and position of the hands to render them accordingly while interacting within the virtual environment. Virtual reality applications often use realistic male or female hands, mimic robotic hands, or cartoon hands. However, it is unclear how users perceive different hand styles. We conducted a study with 14 male and 14 female participants in virtual reality to investigate the effect of gender on the perception of six different hands. Quantitative and qualitative results show that women perceive lower levels of presence while using male avatar hands and male perceive lower levels of presence using non-human avatar hands. While women dislike male hands, men accept and feel presence with avatar hands of both genders. Our results highlight the importance of considering the users' diversity when designing virtual reality experiences.

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  1. "These are not my hands!": Effect of Gender on the Perception of Avatar Hands in Virtual Reality

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      May 2017
      7138 pages
      ISBN:9781450346559
      DOI:10.1145/3025453
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      Published: 02 May 2017

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      1. avatars
      2. immersion
      3. presence
      4. uncanny valley
      5. virtual reality

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      • German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
      • German Research Foundation

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      • (2024)Effects of Third-Person Locomotion Techniques on Sense of Embodiment in Virtual RealityProceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3701571.3701598(72-81)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
      • (2024)Kinetic Connections: Exploring the Impact of Realistic Body Movements on Social Presence in Collaborative Virtual RealityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869108:CSCW2(1-30)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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