Sweating in anticipation : electrodermal insights into adaptive VR horror game design
Samuel Dossche, Jonas De Bruyne, Aleksandra Zheleva, Klaas Bombeke · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2026
Virtual reality (VR) horror games deliver powerful experiences, but player responses differ greatly, motivating the development of adaptive systems that tailor intensity to the player in real time. A promising input for such systems is Electrodermal Activity (EDA), a physiological measure of sympathetic arousal that can be decomposed into slowly varying tonic components (reflecting sustained arousal) and rapid phasic components (reflecting, for example, acute startle responses). Prior work established that feature-level EDA analysis captures individual differences where coarser signal analysis fails. This paper extends that research by testing whether anticipatory build-ups, escalating audio-visual cues preceding a scare, function as a reliable Adaptive Interactive Mechanism (AIM) for modulating player arousal. In a custom “haunted kitchen,” 21 participants experienced nine jump scares, with or without a 25-second build-up. We decomposed the EDA signal into tonic and phasic components across pre-scare, scare, and post-scare periods. Results show that build-ups credibly increase and prolong tonic arousal, while we found no credible evidence that they amplify the acute phasic skin conductance response to the jump scare itself. These findings (1) support build-ups as an effective AIM for managing sustained tension rather than reliably increasing peak startle, and (2) identify specific tonic features and temporal windows suitable for real-time monitoring, offering an empirical basis for designing intelligent, personalised adaptive VR experiences.