Beyond Entertainment: A Feasibility Study on Using Commercial VR Games for Psychological Purposes

Commercial VR games may offer accessible material for psychological research and intervention that may enhance specific psychological capacities, but selecting such games remains challenging. This project examined the feasibility of a procedure for identifying concrete VR experience characteristics that may enhance two psychological constructs (here, cognitive flexibility and tolerance of ambiguity) and using them to assess the relevance of a commercial VR game. In Study 1, experts in cognitive flexibility (N = 6) and tolerance of ambiguity (N = 7) evaluated the theoretical relevance of the proposed characteristics. In Study 2, young adults (N = 55, M_age = 23.17; SD_age = 3.45) played Escape Simulator in VR, rated the presence of these characteristics, and completed pre–post measures of both capacities. Several self-reported indicators of cognitive flexibility and tolerance of ambiguity increased after gameplay (d_z = .27–.57), and cognitive flexibility performance (operationalized as switch cost) decreased (d_z = .73). After Bonferroni correction, three correlations with self-reported change scores remained significant, comprising two positive and one negative association. None of the characteristics was associated with change in task-switching performance, and no associations with user-experience outcomes remained significant after correction. The findings show that psychologically relevant VR experience characteristics can be articulated, evaluated by experts, and assessed during gameplay, but their links to psychological outcomes remain limited. This feasibility study identifies aspects requiring refinement and provides an initial basis for a broader framework for screening commercial VR games for use in psychological purposes.