A meta-analysis of the effect of virtual reality on reducing public speaking anxiety

The fear of public speaking is a prevalent phobia that has a damaging impact on the lives of many phobic patients. One method to treat this phobia is the use of virtual reality (VR). A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol was used to report how the publications that have examined the role of VR in treating public speaking anxiety were identified. A meta-analysis of 92 non-review publications published by January 15, 2021 was conducted. In this meta-analysis, the effectiveness of the treatment of public speaking anxiety refers to the degree of reduction in the participants’ public speaking anxiety from pre-test to post-test. This meta-analysis consisted of an examination of the homogeneity of the studies (the I2 indexes), publication bias (Kendall’s tau and Egger’s regression values) and an estimation of the grand effect size for all studies. The three major findings of this meta-analysis are: (1) Overall, VR had a statistically significant effect on reducing public speaking anxiety, which suggests that VR is a useful and promising therapeutic tool for the treatment of public speaking anxiety; (2) Studies that found VR to be effective in the treatment of public speaking anxiety conducted an average of approximately six VR sessions, with each session lasting around 37 minutes; and (3) VR is statistically as effective as other treatment methods such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Therefore, rather than completely replacing other treatment methods, VR should be used to complement other treatment methods to compensate for some of their disadvantages.