JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Augmented Reality (A.R.) technologies with the potential for augmenting mirror and video self-reflections are growing in popularity. It is important to study how the use of these tools may impact human perception and emotion as it relates to health behavior.

Objective:

We aimed to examine the impact of mirror self-focus attention and vicarious reinforcement on psychological predictors of behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, our study included measures of fear and message minimization to assess potential adverse reactions to the design interventions.

Methods:

A web-based between-subjects experiment (n = 335) was conducted to compare the health perceptions of participants in different design conditions. Those who experienced mirror self-focus, vicarious reinforcement, or a combination of the two were compared to a control condition.

Results:

We found that participants who engaged in mirror self-focus, when combined with vicarious reinforcement displayed directly on the user, resulted in elevated scores of perceived threat severity (P = 0.03) and susceptibility (P = 0.01) when compared to the control. A significant indirect effect of direct mirror reinforcement on intention was found with perceived threat severity as a mediator (b = .06, 95% CI= [.02, .12], SE = .02). Direct mirror reinforcement did not result in higher levels of fear (P = 0.32) or message minimization (P = 0.42) when compared to the control.

Conclusions:

Augmenting reflections with vicarious reinforcement may be an effective strategy for health communication designers. While our study’s results did not show adverse effects in regards to fear and message minimization, utilization of augmenting reflections should be done with care due to possible adverse effects of heightened levels of fear as a health communication strategy.