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A new study published in Psychology of Popular Media indicates that exercising in virtual reality alongside prerecorded avatars can foster a genuine sense of social presence, increase feelings of meaningful connection, and even promote greater physical activity. Although these virtual companions are not actually present in real time, they still tend to simulate the experience of group exercise effectively — and that simulated presence appears to matter.
Social exercise has long been recognized as an effective way to boost motivation, increase enjoyment, and support adherence to fitness routines. But coordinating schedules, managing anxiety around exercising in groups, or simply showing up can be barriers for many. Virtual reality offers a workaround by placing users into immersive environments where they can feel as though they’re not alone — even if they are.
With the rise of commercially available VR exergames like FitXR, which let users take part in dance, boxing, or high-intensity workouts in immersive settings, researchers wanted to understand how users respond to these environments. One feature of FitXR allows participants to “work out” with six other players who appear to be present in real time.
But these players are actually representations of real users whose movements were recorded during past sessions. The software-generated partners, or SGPs, replay these movements to simulate a synchronous group experience. The question is whether users actually perceive these avatars as other people — and whether that perception meaningfully shapes their psychological experience and physical engagement.
For Jih-Hsuan “Tammy” Lin — a distinguished professor at National ChengChi University, associate editor of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and president of the Taiwan Academy for Information Society — this question was rooted in personal experience.
“After getting the VR exercise apps around 2018, I constantly used VR to exercise,” she explained. “Changing the environment and working out anytime you want gives me autonomy to optimize my busy schedule. I was amazed at the multiplayer mode in this VR app because you can tell it’s not a real-time multiplayer mode. Instead, it’s a multiplayer mode across time — other players played at other times, but the program will randomly put past performances (ghost performances) to make you feel like they are with you at the same location! This ‘social presence’ across time is very intriguing, and I wanted to see whether this mode could motivate people to exercise happily — both psychologically and physically.”
The study involved 148 participants between the ages of 20 and 39 who were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: solo exercise or group exercise. In both scenarios, participants followed a virtual coach through a 6-minute aerobic dance routine inside a VR headset. In the group condition, six additional avatars were present, each one representing the prerecorded movements of actual users. In the solo condition, no other avatars appeared.
Participants wore accelerometers on their waist and wrist to measure movement and completed several questionnaires afterward. These included measures of enjoyment, appreciation, perceived social presence, physical exertion, and arousal. Researchers also tracked participants’ attention to the coach and to the scoreboard that displayed performance rankings.
The experiment aimed to test whether the group exercise condition would promote higher levels of physical activity and perceived exertion, as well as stronger psychological responses like enjoyment and a sense of appreciation.
The researchers found that the group condition appeared to foster a stronger sense of social presence — that is, participants felt as though they were truly exercising with other people in the same space. This sense was based on two dimensions: “salience” (being aware that others are visually present) and “perceived actorhood” (interpreting those avatars as real people). Participants in the group condition scored significantly higher on both.
“Virtual reality can create an illusion that you are exercising with others in the same space at the same time (although these are other people’s past performances at different times),” Lin told PsyPost.
Participants also rated the experience as more enjoyable and meaningful compared to those in the solo condition. Enjoyment reflects the pleasure of the experience, while appreciation involves a more reflective response — a feeling that the activity was significant or emotionally resonant.
“Exercising with others virtually makes people appreciate the experience,” Lin said.
When it came to actual movement, group participants showed more physical activity in their hand movements, as recorded by the accelerometers, compared to the solo participants. However, differences in waist movement, perceived exertion, and arousal were not statistically significant.
The study’s most notable finding came from a mediation analysis. The researchers found that the perceived social presence of others in the group condition led to greater appreciation, which in turn was linked to increased physical activity (as measured by waist movement). This suggests that feeling connected to others — even virtually and asynchronously — can lead to deeper engagement with exercise.
Enjoyment, while higher in the group condition, did not appear to significantly mediate the relationship between social presence and physical activity. This points to a potentially more meaningful mechanism: it’s not just that VR group exercise is fun; it also feels purposeful.
“I was very impressed with the results that VR exercise with others across time would lead to greater exercise performance and motivation through social presence and through appreciation — not enjoyment,” Lin said. “This is particularly important to indicate that psychological appraisal of the exercise experience can lead to greater physical performance and psychological motivation. Social context is important for exercise outcomes, and VR is very effective in achieving such personalized social presence.”
The researchers argue that this illusion of shared effort — the idea that you and others are tackling the same physical challenge together — plays a key role in making the exercise feel more rewarding. They link this to the psychological concept of eudaimonic appreciation, where meaningfulness, rather than just pleasure, drives emotional engagement.
This has implications for how we understand motivation in virtual environments. The simple perception of others’ presence, even if artificial, can satisfy the human need for social connection. It also introduces a form of social facilitation — the psychological boost that comes from knowing you’re being observed or evaluated — which can improve performance even without direct communication or real-time interaction.
The study provides evidence for the psychological and behavioral effects of simulated group exercise, but it has limitations. The experiment was limited to a single 6-minute aerobic routine, which may not fully capture longer-term engagement or endurance. Future studies could explore whether these effects persist over weeks or months, or how different types of exercises — such as boxing or high-intensity training — interact with the sense of social presence.
While the scale used to measure social presence was well-grounded in existing literature, the researchers note that the experience of presence in VR is complex and may involve more dimensions than were captured in this study.
“The study would have been more thorough if we also measured whether the participants realized that the others are ghost performances instead of real-time performances,” Lin noted. “I wonder if there are differences among those who know that these virtual others are not real-time and those who do not realize that.”
The long-term goal is to design personalized, autonomous, and socially rich exercise environments that promote health and well-being through immersive technology.
“Using technology to achieve better well-being is my goal, and designing a personalized and comfortable VR exercise experience is in line with public promotion,” Lin said. “Not just the social contexts — we can also compete with celebrities, even some iconic people, to break the limit and increase the novelty of these experiences.”
“Everyone should try FitXR and Supernatural to experience how technology can fit our needs and help us autonomize our own busy schedules to pursue a greater life and well-being,” she added.
The study, “Let Us Sweat It Out in Virtual Reality: The Effects of Virtual Reality Exercise Contexts on Physical Activity Outcomes Through Social Presence and Audience Responses,” was authored by Jih-Hsuan (Tammy) Lin, Dai-Yun Wu, and Ji-Wei Yang.
