Virtual reality (VR) has been used for years to help people manage pain in hospitals by distracting them from what they’re feeling.
But most of the time, patients use VR alone. A new study from Cornell University has taken this idea further by exploring what happens when people use social virtual reality (SVR)—VR that includes interacting with another person—during painful experiences.
The research was done in Cornell’s Virtual Embodiment Lab, led by Professor Andrea Stevenson Won. The study was mainly conducted by Isabelle McLeod Daphnis, a recent Cornell graduate and lab manager, and it was published in the journal Pain Medicine.
What makes this study special is that it combined two things: how people handle pain during social interactions, and how VR can help with pain.
Earlier research in 2020 showed that talking to a stranger in VR while experiencing mild pain helped people manage the pain better. The new study expanded on that by including interactions with both friends and strangers, and even compared VR to Zoom video calls.
To test pain, the researchers asked each of the 70 participants—most of them Cornell students—to put their hand on a thermal device that slowly heated up. Once it became too uncomfortable, the person could remove their hand.
The researchers recorded the temperature level at which the person removed their hand and asked them to rate the pain from 1 to 10.
Each participant went through four different situations in a random order: 1) talking with a friend or family member in VR, 2) talking with a friend or family member via Zoom, 3) talking with a stranger in VR, and 4) being alone in VR.
Most participants preferred talking to someone in VR—whether it was a friend or stranger—over being alone or using Zoom. Some said the interaction helped distract them from the pain.
However, an interesting result was that a few people who felt deeply “present” in the VR experience actually held their hand down longer and reported feeling more pain. This was surprising, since earlier studies suggested that feeling more present usually means better distraction and less pain.
One possible explanation is that if a person was more engaged in the VR interaction, they may have been more willing to tolerate the pain a bit longer to stay connected with the other person.
In this study, researchers didn’t just ask people to rate their pain—they also used real behavior, like how long they kept their hand on the hot surface, to measure pain. Professor Won said this kind of behavioral measure might be more useful in real hospital settings, where people may not always accurately describe their pain.
The project also gave many Cornell students a chance to be involved in important research. Some students who worked on this study are now in medical school or graduate programs, which shows how meaningful this experience was for them.
This new research gives hope that using virtual reality socially—not just alone—might help people manage pain better. It could lead to new ways to support patients, making their experience less stressful and more engaging.
The study is published in Pain Medicine.
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