An experiment involving undergraduate students in the Netherlands revealed that a single virtual reality (VR) role-playing session could potentially increase self-compassion and decrease self-criticism. The study targeted students known for their self-critical nature, asking them to extend compassion towards a virtual character that voiced their own self-critical thoughts. The paper was published in Behaviour Research and Therapy.
Self-criticism is the tendency to evaluate oneself harshly, focusing on perceived failures and shortcomings. It involves holding oneself to high standards and being overly critical of one’s actions or decisions. While self-criticism can sometimes motivate self-improvement, it can also lead to feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and decreased mental well-being. Excessive self-criticism can be detrimental, as it may hinder personal growth and contribute to negative emotional states such as anxiety and depression.
There is a vicious circle between self-criticism and psychopathology where self-criticism increases vulnerability to psychopathology, but the resultant psychopathology, in turn, also increases self-criticism further, reducing a person’s ability to cope.
On the other hand, self-compassion involves treating oneself with kindness, understanding, and forgiveness, particularly during times of difficulty or failure. This approach fosters emotional resilience and promotes overall well-being. It is generally considered to be an adaptive emotion regulation strategy that can contribute to the recovery from psychiatric disorders.
Study author Marit Hidding and her colleagues wanted to explore whether a single virtual reality session can diminish self-criticism and improve self-compassion if it makes participants take a different perspective. Studies indicate that there is an antagonistic relationship between self-criticism and self-compassion, so increasing self-compassion could be expected to reduce self-criticism.
These authors designed a VR exercise based on the cognitive-behavioral technique called “double standards” in which the patient is asked what he/she would say to a friend who has a similar self-criticism. They conducted an experiment.
Study participants were 68 Dutch undergraduate psychology students from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They were all between 17 and 30 years of age. Study authors recruited them via the Psychology Department’s subject pool. These particular participants were selected from a larger pool because of their high self-criticism assessed in the screening procedure using the Forms of Self-Criticism and Self-Reassuring Scale.
Participants were randomly divided into two groups. One group participated in a VR session that included the perspective change technique (the treatment group), while the other went through a similar VR session without using this technique (the control group).
At the beginning of the procedure, participants entered a virtual environment to acclimate themselves. The researcher would then discuss the participant’s self-criticisms with them and guide them on how to behave compassionately in the subsequent role-play. In these role-plays, participants were instructed to imagine the virtual character as a friend and treat them with compassion. This character voiced the participant’s own self-criticisms.
There were two such role-plays. For the treatment group, the VR sessions were recorded and replayed, allowing participants to view the session from the virtual character’s perspective and hear their own compassionate responses. The control group did not experience this replay.
Before and after the sessions, participants completed assessments of self-criticism and self-compassion (the Self-Compassion and Self-Criticism Scale), and momentary positive and negative affect (a visual analogue scale). After the sessions, they also reported on their feelings of presence in the VR environment (the Igroup Presence Questionnaire) and evaluated their subjective experience of the intervention.
Results showed that both groups showed a decrease in self-criticism and an increase in self-compassion. The replay of the VR session with changed perspectives did not have any particular effect as the observed changes were of equal size in both groups. Positive and negative affects did not change after the session.
“The single-session VR intervention based on the CBT [cognitive-behavioral therapy] technique ‘double standards’ was effective to reduce self-criticism and enhance self-compassion significantly in a sample of participants with a high level of self-criticism. The current study demonstrated that both expressing compassion as well as receiving one’s own compassion has a significant positive effect. Thus, expressing compassion to someone else with similar self-criticism seems to be enough to gain self-compassion and decrease self-criticism,” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on potential therapeutic effects of interventions in virtual reality. However, it should be noted that this study did not show an effect of the intended treatment, but only a change in self-compassion and self-criticism in both groups after the intervention. Due to this, it is not certain that the change was the effect of the intervention and not simply occurring at the same time with it. Additionally, study authors assessed self-compassion and self-criticism immediately after the intervention and not later, so it remains unknown how long the change lasts.
The paper, “A single-session VR intervention addressing self-compassion and self-criticism with and without perspective change: Results of a randomized controlled experiment,” was authored by Marit Hidding, Wim Veling, Gerdina H.M. Pijnenborg, and Elisabeth C.D. van der Stouwe.