Social Inhibition of Vection

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the social interaction can affect vection strength. We compared the strength of self-motion perception (vection) with and without an audience (two people in addition to the participant) present during stimulus presentation. We presented the optical flow (dots’ expansion) for 40 seconds and obtained vection duration and latency and we also obtained the subjective strength of vection via magnitude estimation. We found that vection was inhibited by the presence of an audience. We speculate that audience presence might distract the attention of participants from the vection, depriving them of the attentional resources inhibited vection.