Squeeze The Pain Away: Using a Wireless Ball to Measure Efforts to Reduce Other’s Pain Expressions in VR

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Zhang, Ju; Ma, Fang; Birtel, Michèle Denise; Pan, Xueni and Farmer, Harry. 2025. 'Squeeze The Pain Away: Using a Wireless Ball to Measure Efforts to Reduce Other’s Pain Expressions in VR'. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’25). Yokohama, Japan 26 April - 1 May 2025. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Official URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3720164

Abstract or Description

Virtual reality has often been used as a tool to study empathy. However, few studies have explored users’ willingness to make physical effort to actively reduce others’ pain. We developed a pipeline that integrates a wireless stress ball into a VR environment. This device measures continuous grip force, enabling participants to adjust a virtual character’s pain expressions through squeezing: the harder they squeeze, the less intense the pain expressions become in real-time. This shifts the participants’ focus from passive observation to active participation. Our results indicated that participants were highly motivated to use the ball to reduce virtual characters’ pain and showed particularly high use of effort in the first 10 seconds of a 15-second trial. Eye-tracking data revealed that participants focused primarily on pain-related facial features, consistent with previous pain decoding studies. Our effort-based approach offers a novel method to study pain perception.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Poster)

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720164

Additional Information:

"© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record is available at, https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720164."

This work was supported by the Institute for Lifecourse Development and a Vice Chancellor Scholarship from the University of Greenwich awarded to the first author.

Keywords:

real-time measures, engagement, pain, EDA, squeeze interaction, perception

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Computing

Dates: