Attitude Change in Immersive Virtual Environments

Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) are foreseen to function as effective tools of persuasion fundamentally because of the phenomenon of presence, the perception of and response to the virtual environment as real. Previous research suggests that IVE exposure decreases biases and fosters positive attitudes more effectively than traditional media even in the context of polarizing topics, for example migration and climate change. The research goals of the dissertation are to examine the influence of IVE experiences on attitudes and the factors moderating this effect. It does so in four consecutive research stages, building on a theoretical framework of media richness, presence, attitude extremity and motivated reasoning. Altogether, it a. provides an overview of extant empirical literature in a review with meta-analysis, b. explores the production, dissemination and evaluation of IVEs used by charitable organizations in a series of interviews and c. tests for the moderating role of attitude extremity in two experimental research designs.