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Effect of Social Settings on Proxemics During Social Interactions in Real and Virtual Conditions

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Book cover Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (EuroVR 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 12499))

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Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) offers unlimited possibilities to create virtual populated environments in which a user can be immersed and experience social interactions with virtual humans. A better understanding of these interactions is required to improve the realism of the interactions as well as user’s experience. Using an approach based on Interactionist Sociology, we wondered whether the social settings within which the individual interact has an impact on proxemics norms in real conditions and if these norms apply in VR. We conducted an experiment in real and virtual conditions where individuals experienced a transgression of proxemics norms at a train station and in a sports fan zone. Our results suggest that proxemics norms vary according to the subjective relationship of the individual to the social settings. This variation would translate directly into a modulation of bodily sensitivity to the proximity of the body of others. While we were able to show that social norms still exist in VR, our results did not show a main effect of the social settings on participants’ sensitivity to the transgression of proxemics norms. We discuss our results in the frame of the cross-fertilization between Sociology and VR.

Supported by the ANR OPMoPS project (ANR-SEBM-0004) and the Inria associate team BEAR.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ENS, Univ. Rennes, Rennes, France

    Tristan Duverné & Théo Rougnant

  2. Laboratoire VIPS2, Univ. Rennes, Rennes, France

    François Le Yondre

  3. Univ Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, Rennes, France

    Florian Berton, Julien Bruneau, Katja Zibrek, Julien Pettré & Ludovic Hoyet

  4. Univ Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, M2S, Rennes, France

    Anne-Hélène Olivier

Authors
  1. Tristan Duverné
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  2. Théo Rougnant
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  3. François Le Yondre
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  4. Florian Berton
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  5. Julien Bruneau
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  6. Katja Zibrek
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  7. Julien Pettré
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  8. Ludovic Hoyet
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  9. Anne-Hélène Olivier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anne-Hélène Olivier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. VENISE team, LIMSI-CNRS, Paris-Saclay University, Orsay, France

    Patrick Bourdot

  2. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Victoria Interrante

  3. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Regis Kopper

  4. University of Rennes 2, Rennes, France

    Anne-Hélène Olivier

  5. Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan

    Hideo Saito

  6. University of Bremen, Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Gabriel Zachmann

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Duverné, T. et al. (2020). Effect of Social Settings on Proxemics During Social Interactions in Real and Virtual Conditions. In: Bourdot, P., Interrante, V., Kopper, R., Olivier, AH., Saito, H., Zachmann, G. (eds) Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12499. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62655-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62655-6_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62654-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62655-6

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