PTs for monitoring positive moods and emotions

Today, sensors are increasingly integrated into the products we use daily, allowing activities and experiences to be monitored. Currently, there are many developing technological advancements designed to scan and measure emotions and moods. For instance, devices can assess physiological variables (i.e., skin conductance, heart activity), detect body movements (i.e., walking posture), or recognize facial expression or emotions during speech. It is also possible to measure other relevant variables that are clearly related to mood and emotions, such as physical activity, sleep patterns, or a healthy diet.

The widespread use of smartphones brings new opportunities to measure emotions. Most of them already have embedded sensors to detect users’ activity and experiences, and even environmental variables. With technologies such as accelerometers, global positioning systems (GPS), gyroscopes or light sensors, among others, they can collect large amounts of ecologically valid data easily and quickly from large global samples (Miller, Reference Miller2012). Currently, there are many apps on the market that monitor users’ behaviors and give them feedback in order to increase their awareness of how these lifestyle choices impact their personal wellbeing (e.g., IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, 2015).

Emotions and experiences can also be monitored through our “digital footprints”. As we use the Internet and other ICTs, we leave records and traces behind us (location, visited webpages, social networks…). All these footprints offer complex social and dynamic data that can be useful to develop theories to better understand and predict human emotions and behaviors in context and select optimal interventions depending on the specific characteristics of the situation and the user (Kosinski, Wang, Lakkaraju, & Leskovec, Reference Kosinski, Wang, Lakkaraju and Leskovec2016). It is possible, for instance, to predict individual wellbeing through Facebook users’ natural language (Schwartz et al., Reference Schwartz, Sap, Kern, Eichstaedt, Kapelner, Agrawal and Ungar2016).

In conclusion, ICTs have considerably improved the way we monitor emotions in general, and positive emotions in particular, providing a continuous and reliable record of almost any variable related to them. The foreseeable future will provide even more spectacular innovations that will increase the reliability and validity of these records. These data are likely to be very useful for generating theories and explanatory models of why, when, and how emotions emerge (Saranummi et al., Reference Saranummi, Spruijt-Metz, Intille, Korhone, Nilsen and Pavel2013).

PTs for inducing positive emotions

The possibility of inducing emotions in a controlled and experimental way has been a topic of interest in Psychology for many years. In recent decades, a set of procedures have been developed that are able to induce emotional changes in experimental contexts. They are called “Mood Induction Procedures” (MIPs), strategies designed to provoke a transitory emotional state in an individual in a non-natural setting in a controlled manner (García-Palacios & Baños, Reference García-Palacios and Baños1999). MIPs are supposed to create an experimental analogue for the mood that would arise in a certain natural situation. They include a wide variety of methods that have been shown to be effective in achieving changes in the target mood in the context of emotion research, psychological treatments, and the promotion of wellbeing and positive emotions (e.g., Baños et al., Reference Baños, Botella, Guerrero, Liaño, Alcañiz and Rey2005).

Virtual Reality (VR) has been proposed as a useful tool to increase the effectiveness and potential of MIPs (e.g., Baños et al., Reference Baños, Botella, Guerrero, Liaño, Alcañiz and Rey2005; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Castilla, Garcia-Palacios, Quero and Botella2012; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Espinoza, García-Palacios, Cervera, Esquerdo, Barrajón and Botella2013; Felnhofer et al., Reference Felnhofer, Kothgassner, Schmidt, Heinzle, Beutl, Hlavacs and Kryspin-Exner2015). VR can be considered as an advanced imaginal system that allows users to become immersed in a computer-generated environment that is as effective as reality in inducing emotional responses (Riva, Baños, Botella, Mantovani, & Gaggoli, Reference Riva, Baños, Botella, Mantovani and Gaggioli2016). With this technology, users do not need to rely on internal imagery or their ability to visualize: VR not only generates the (emotional) images, but it also enables the user to directly experience emotions. The use of this technology has additional advantages (Botella et al., Reference Botella, Quero, Baños, Perpiñá, García-Palacios and Riva2004; Wilson & Soranzo, Reference Wilson and Soranzo2015). It allows greater control over stimuli presentation and the study of situations that can be impractical or ethically questionable in real life. In addition, complex 3D scenarios can be created with different levels and combinations of multimodal sensory input (allowing audio, haptic, olfactory, and motion to be experienced simultaneously with the graphical environment). It also allows greater variety and more ecological responses and the possibility of examining sophisticated, complex participant behaviors.

VR used as MIP (VR-MIP) could be a useful PT at both “hedonic” and “eudaimonic” levels. Because they can help users to achieve positive emotional states and wellbeing in the short term, they could be considered a “hedonic technology”. In addition, people who continue to practice positive emotions regularly could increase other positive strengths, making it an “eudaimonic technology”. In fact, VR-MIPs have been examined in some studies with the aim of promoting positive emotions and wellbeing. Our group has developed several systems with these objectives, and they have been validated in different populations with positive results (adolescents, university students, oncology patients, depressed people, isolated astronauts, elderly, etc.) (e.g., Baños et al., Reference Baños, Botella, Rubió, Quero, Garcia-Palacios and Alcañiz2008; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Castilla, Garcia-Palacios, Quero and Botella2012; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Espinoza, García-Palacios, Cervera, Esquerdo, Barrajón and Botella2013; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Farfallini, Garcia-Palacios, Quero and Botella2014; Botella, Baños, Etchemendy, García-Palacios, & Alcañiz, Reference Botella, Baños, Etchemendy, García-Palacios and Alcañiz2016; Etchemendy et al., Reference Etchemendy, Baños, Botella, Castilla, Alcañiz, Rasal and Farfallini2011; Serrano, Botella, Baños, & Alcañiz, Reference Serrano, Botella, Baños and Alcañiz2013; Vara et al., Reference Vara, Baños, Rasal, Rodríguez, Rey, Wrzesien and Alcañiz2016).

In a similar direction, Gaggioli, Chirico, Triberti, and Riva (Reference Gaggioli, Chirico, Triberti and Riva2016) proposed the use of VR to induce complex positive emotions such as awe, a multifaceted emotion where fear is blended with astonishment, admiration, and wonder. These authors suggest Computer-Mediated Self-Transcendence as a possible new research path. It refers to the use of interactive technologies to promote, facilitate, or enhance peak experiences (out-of-the-ordinary life moments that allow individuals to experience something greater than themselves, reflect on deeper dimensions of their existence, shape lasting spiritual beliefs, and enhance feelings of connectedness). Research on the application of VR to these experiences is promising but scarce. A pioneering example is the “Virtual Space Lab” (Gallagher et al., Reference Gallagher, Reinerman-Jones, Janz, Bruhn, Templar and Sollins2014), a virtual simulation designed to produce the experiences of awe and wonder reported by astronauts during space flights.

Based on all these studies, we can assert that VR-MIPs are very useful tools for promoting and training positive emotions. Moreover, they have shown their utility in the research on positive emotions, providing knowledge about the variables involved in emotional processing. For example, our group is studying the role of body movements in positive emotions and motivation. Specifically, we have examined the effects of an approach body movement (pedaling on an exercise bicycle) combined with joy induction (through VR-MIPs) on cognitions about achieving a personal goal. Preliminary data has shown that there is an influence of body movements on approach motivation when inducing a positive emotion (Vara, Miragall, Cebolla, & Baños, Reference Vara, Baños, Rasal, Rodríguez, Rey, Wrzesien and Alcañiz2016).

Holmes and Mathews (Reference Holmes and Mathews2010) point to the potential of imagery in understanding emotions and emotional disorders, and we think VR can be useful for the same purposes. These authors suggest that imagery can be a powerful tool to promote learning processes, including emotional and behavior learning. Specifically, in emotion processes, imagery seems to play a key role (i.e., it produces a more powerful impact on emotion than verbal processing of the same material). We propose that these possibilities are also present in VR because it is able to produce not only an immersive environment, but emotional experiences as well. Thus, VR may be a promising tool for studying emotions and therapy.

PT for promoting empathy and compassion

Empathy and compassion are two positive emotions that share common attributes: both include the echo of another person’s emotional state. Empathy is the ability to share and understand another’s “state of mind” or emotion (Ioannidou & Konstantikaki, Reference Ioannidou and Konstantikaki2008), whereas compassion is an emotional state produced by another person’s suffering that motivates the individual to alleviate this pain (Araya & Moncada, Reference Araya and Moncada2016; Feldman Barrett, Lewis, & Haviland-Jones, 2016). The benefits of these emotions for both individual and social wellbeing are well known (Feldman Barrett et al., 2016). VR is currently being studied as a tool to foster and understand empathy and compassion.

Regarding empathy, VR can give users the opportunity to walk in another person’s shoes and understand different perspectives, as it provides greater immersion than just a 2D video on a screen. Users can actually live another reality. All these features can foster a feeling of empathy for someone else. One example is the study by Ahn, Le, and Bailenson (Reference Ahn, Le and Bailenson2013), which analyzed the effect of embodying another person’s perceptual experiences (color blindness) on perspective taking and helpful behaviors. They found that participants who embodied the colorblindness perception (through VR) experienced greater “self-other merging” and voluntarily made twice as much effort to help people with colorblindness, compared to participants who had only imagined being colorblind. Even the United Nations has used VR to foster empathy. For example, they developed the project “Clouds over Sidra”, a short 360° VR film about a girl (Sidra) who lives in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and shows users what it is like to live in there (Milk & Arora, Reference Milk and Arora2015). All these examples show VR’s potential for promoting empathy, with the resulting individual and social benefits.

Furthering the possibilities of VR, there is a new development that can lead to empathy and compassion induction: “The Machine to Be Another” (www.themachinetobeanother.org). It is a low budget system created by BeAnotherLab that uses multi-sensory stimuli (visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and audio) to induce a body swap illusion. It works using a head-mounted display that shows the perspective of another person (the performer, who holds a first person camera controlled by the participant’s head movements). This performer mimics the participants’ movements, so that both (performer and participant) move in synchrony. When the latter interacts with the physical space, s/he also receives realistic tactile stimuli. All these features facilitate the body swap illusion: one has the feeling of being in the performer’s body, identifying with him/her. This system has many possibilities in working with empathy: the feeling of being in another person’s skin (a real person, not an avatar) can enhance feelings of empathy (Collaçao De Oliveira et al., 2016). At this time, there is only preliminary but promising data, based on the statements of users and performers. The authors argue that the system has great potential as a social tool to stimulate empathy and compassion among different groups, and because it is very flexible, it can be used in a wide variety of applications in empathy and compassion research and related topics such as conflict mediation, psychotherapy, and so on.

PTs for studying the body-emotion relationships

As Damasio (Reference Damasio1999) and Frijda (Reference Frijda1986) remind us, emotions cannot be understood without considering the body: “emotions are a matter of the body: the heart, stomach, intestines, body activity and impulse. They are of the flesh and sear the flesh” (Frijda, Reference Frijda1986, p. 5). So far, we have seen how VR can help to study and promote positive emotions, providing a recreation of external reality through a simulated environment. However, VR can also further the understanding of the inextricable relationship between body and emotions. Thus, it is also possible to use VR to simulate our “internal reality”, including the way we perceive our bodies, control them, and affectively react to what happens to them.

According to Riva et al. (Reference Riva, Baños, Botella, Mantovani and Gaggioli2016), the inclusion of the body in VR is possible in at least two ways: through “incarnation” (making users feel their physical body within a virtual environment), or through “embodiment” (making users experience the synthetic avatar as if it were “their own body”, that is, as if their physical body had been replaced by the virtual one). “Embodiment” takes place when a virtual body coincides spatially with the participant’s real body and the participant sees through the eyes of this body and experiences various degrees of synchronous multisensory correlation – such as visuomotor (Falconer et al., Reference Falconer, Slater, Rovira, King, Gilbert, Antley and Brewin2014). These body illusions can be very powerful, and they have physiological and psychological consequences (e.g., Barnsley et al., Reference Barnsley, McAuley, Mohan, Dey, Thomas and Moseley2011; Peck, Seinfeld, Aglioti, & Slater, Reference Peck, Seinfeld, Aglioti and Slater2013).

Because it is possible to create embodiment illusions through VR, this tool can be considered an “embodied technology” (Riva, Reference Riva2008). Thus, it has different advantages. First, it makes it possible to amplify the “modeling” of learning. During this experience, the avatar is the participant’s own body, as well as the learning model (e.g., Aymerich-Franch, Kizilcec, & Bailenson, Reference Aymerich-Franch, Kizilcec and Bailenson2014). Second, we can study the assumptions of “embodied cognition and emotion theories” and analyze the relationships among posture, body movements, body actions, cognition, and emotion. These theories state that our body has a direct influence on our cognition and emotions (Price, Peterson, & Harmon-Jones, Reference Price, Peterson and Harmon-Jones2012). Manipulating our bodies through virtual bodies and environments can greatly amplify the possibilities for research in this field. For instance, in a previous section we stated that we are studying the inclusion of movements in virtual environments to promote positive emotions. Third, VR fosters the experience of simple and complex emotions (for example, using embodiment processes to promote empathy and compassion). We saw some examples in the previous section (Ahn et al., Reference Ahn, Le and Bailenson2013; Collaçao De Oliveira et al., 2016). Finally, VR can be used to alter or model the boundaries of the body and more closely analyze the body agency and ownership processes (Banakou, Groten, & Slater, Reference Banakou, Groten and Slater2013).

In this regard, a basic question arises: is it necessary to have a realistic virtual body in order to experience embodiment with it? In fact, people psychologically identify with virtual representations that do not necessarily reflect their actual appearances. VR can provide the person with a new self-representation very easily by modifying the appearance of his/her avatar. Transforming the appearance of one’s self is a particularly powerful VR application that can cause behavioral, emotional, and attitudinal changes (Aymerich-Franch et al., Reference Aymerich-Franch, Kizilcec and Bailenson2014). For example, Yee and Bailenson (Reference Yee and Bailenson2007) proposed the process called the “Proteus effect” (when an individual’s behavior conforms to his/her digital self-representation, i.e., a taller or more attractive avatar), and Osimo, Pizarro, Spanlang, and Slater (Reference Osimo, Pizarro, Spanlang and Slater2015) found that embodying a counselor (Sigmund Freud) while giving self-counseling about a current problem produced a more satisfactory outcome compared to embodying a lookalike representation of oneself.

VR has also been used as an “embodied technology” in the self-compassion field. As mentioned above, “The Machine to Be Another” system can promote empathy and compassion. Other studies have also explored how VR and virtual body illusions can help to promote self-compassion. For instance, Falconer et al. (Reference Falconer, Slater, Rovira, King, Gilbert, Antley and Brewin2014, Reference Falconer, Rovira, King, Gilbert, Antley, Fearon and Brewin2016) used VR to offer people the experience of delivering compassion to themselves. Participants interacted compassionately with a crying child while embodied in an adult avatar. Then, half of them embodied the child avatar and could re-experience their compassionate response from this perspective. The other half watched the compassionate response from a third person perspective. The former group significantly increased their scores on self-compassion, compared to the latter group.

In conclusion, VR is able to induce the illusion of being another person or having another body. It allows manipulations that would be unethical or even impossible when performed in the real world. These manipulations have important psychological consequences and may influence the way people perceive their actions and their consequences (and even themselves). In this regard, VR opens the door to new experimental procedures and new therapeutic strategies that will be explored and developed in the near future.

PTs for training positive emotions

In addition to what has been presented so far, PTs have also been shown to be useful tools for training positive emotions (e.g., Vara et al., Reference Vara, Baños, Rasal, Rodríguez, Rey, Wrzesien and Alcañiz2016; Wrzesien et al., Reference Wrzesien, Rodríguez, Rey, Alcañiz, Baños and Vara2015). Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) are defined as interventions or intentional activities designed to cultivate positive feelings, cognitions, and behaviors (Sin & Lyubomirsky, Reference Sin and Lyubomirsky2009), and they can be improved with the use of ICTs. In fact, many PPIs have been developed in the context of PTs (Baños, Etchemendy, Carrillo-Vega, & Botella, Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Carrillo-Vega, Botella, Villani, Cipresso, Gaggioli and Riva2016). The development of these interventions, especially those delivered online (Online PPIs), has increased spectacularly in recent years. With the increasing use of smartphones, many free applications (apps) are being developed constantly. Specifically in the field of emotions, there are many, and so people in search of greater wellbeing have the opportunity to engage with thousands of downloadable self-help apps (Howells, Ivtzan, & Eiroa-Orosa, Reference Howells, Ivtzan and Eiroa-Orosa2016). It is not within the scope of this work to summarize all the ways ICTs can train and modify positive emotions (for a review, see Baños et al., Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Carrillo-Vega, Botella, Villani, Cipresso, Gaggioli and Riva2016; Baños et al., Reference Baños, Etchemendy, Mira, Riva, Gaggioli and Botella2017; Bolier et al., Reference Bolier, Haverman, Westerhof, Riper, Smit and Bohlmeijer2013; Bolier & Abello, Reference Bolier, Abello, Parks and Schueller2014). We will only point out the emerging problems with the validity of all these applications. Not all of them are evidence-based programs, and users do not know whether they are trustworthy or not. There is a “race” between evidence-based interventions and systems (which need time to be developed and validated) and user-level systems developed by individuals or companies without a scientific background (which are more quickly developed and launched). ICTs, and even PTs, also have a “dark side”.