Papers by Andrea Gaggioli
The emotion of awe is characterized by the perception of vastness and a need for accommodation, w... more The emotion of awe is characterized by the perception of vastness and a need for accommodation, which can include a positive and/or negative valence. While a number of studies have successfully manipulated this emotion, the issue of how to elicit particularly intense awe experiences in laboratory settings remains. We suggest that virtual reality (VR) is a particularly effective mood induction tool for eliciting awe. VR provides three key assets for improving awe. First, VR provides users with immersive and ecological yet controlled environments that can elicit a sense of " presence, " the subjective experience of " being there " in a simulated reality. Further, VR can be used to generate complex, vast stimuli, which can target specific theoretical facets of awe. Finally, VR allows for convenient tracking of participants' behavior and physiological responses, allowing for more integrated assessment of emotional experience. We discussed the potential and challenges of the proposed approach with an emphasis on VR's capacity to raise the signal of reactions to emotions such as awe in laboratory settings.
During life, many personal changes occur. These include changing house, school, work, and even fr... more During life, many personal changes occur. These include changing house, school, work, and even friends and partners. However, the daily experience shows clearly that, in some situations, subjects are unable to change even if they want to. The recent advances in psychology and neuroscience are now providing a better view of personal change, the change affecting our assumptive world: (a) the focus of personal change is reducing the distance between self and reality (conflict); (b) this reduction is achieved through (1) an intense focus on the particular experience creating the conflict or (2) an internal or external reorganization of this experience; (c) personal change requires a progression through a series of different stages that however happen in discontinuous and non-linear ways; and (d) clinical psychology is often used to facilitate personal change when subjects are unable to move forward. Starting from these premises, the aim of this paper is to review the potential of virtuality for enhancing the processes of personal and clinical change. First, the paper focuses on the two leading virtual technologies – augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) – exploring their current uses in behavioral health and the outcomes of the 28 available systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Then the paper discusses the added value provided by VR and AR in transforming our external experience by focusing on the high level of personal efficacy and self-reflectiveness generated by their sense of presence and emotional engagement. Finally, it outlines the potential future use of virtuality for transforming our inner experience by structuring, altering, and/ or replacing our bodily self-consciousness. The final outcome may be a new generation of transformative experiences that provide knowledge that is epistemically inaccessible to the individual until he or she has that experience, while at the same time transforming the individual's worldview.
Supporting creative collaboration in the classroom is considered an important objective by curren... more Supporting creative collaboration in the classroom is considered an important objective by current education research, as growing evidence suggests that this practice is linked with the quality of learning and the development of problem solving skills. Drawing on recent advances in group creativity research, social cognition and network science, we propose a theoretical framework for studying creative collaboration that integrates the concepts of group flow and social presence. Our key hypothesis is that in order for a group to enter the creative state of flow, members must be able to develop a "we-intention", in which the actions of the individuals and those of the collective are merged (social presence). According to our model, this is a staged process, beginning with the co-construction of a shared frame within the group and culminating with the creation of a novel artefact or concept. A further assumption is that the emergence of such optimal group state is associated with structural changes in the dynamics of group interaction, which can be effectively investigated using social network analysis techniques.
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Papers by Andrea Gaggioli