The Effects of Perspective‐Based Out‐of‐Body Experience in Virtual Reality Public Speaking

ABSTRACT Virtual reality (VR) offers an immersive platform for practicing public speaking in controlled environments that simulate various audience settings and performance contexts. Prior research has examined how manipulating visual perspectives, a common method for inducing out‐of‐body experiences (OBEs), can influence users across various contexts. However, the effects of visual perspectives in a VR public speaking setting remain underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a VR public speaking study in which we compared three perspective‐based OBE conditions (i.e., first‐person perspective vs. third‐person perspective back vs. third‐person perspective front) and explored their effects on objective measurements (i.e., acoustic features of speech and gaze behaviors) and self‐reported ratings (i.e., sense of embodiment, co‐presence, intrinsic motivation, and self‐statements). Moreover, we explored the correlations between objective and self‐reported data. We found that perspective‐based OBE conditions had a significant effect on spectral slope, gaze behaviors (i.e., fixation count, average fixation duration, and total fixation duration), sense of embodiment (i.e., body ownership, agency and motor control, and external appearance), and co‐presence. Results also showed several correlations between objective measurements and self‐reported ratings. Our findings highlight how perspective‐based OBE conditions influence human behavior, with practical implications for the design of VR experiences for public speaking.