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Positive psychology focuses on peoples' strengths and helping people to reach their full potential rather than fixing something that is broken or "disordered". The purpose is to help individuals enhance aspects of their life so that they can live to the fullest. VR can help people to achieve their dreams by immersing them in environments to help them visualize their future and understand what it will take to achieve their goals. The purpose behind this is to help people to reach self-actualization, the ultimate end goal of positive psychology.
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This site discusses using virtual reality psychology as a way to achieve self-actualization and achieve goals in your life. Visualization is a powerful tool in achieving success and VR can help us to accelerate the process so we can reach our full potential. VR allows us to be immersed in the visualization so we can actually live out our dreams. Research has shown that our responses to VR are just as real and immediate as they are in actual reality. By being fully immersed and experiencing ourselves achieving the goal, VR can help the goals to become tangible. VR allows for immersion and repetition which are the keys for positive behavior change. Through the use of VR, we can see self-actualization in action.
This site discusses using virtual reality to study the emotion of awe. Awe is considered to be such a strong emotion that it can change peoples' lives, but there has not been enough research conducted to understand its full potential. They suggest that VR may be one way to discover the full potential of awe. Research has shown that VR has the potential to induce a personal change in people by simulating both our outer and inner worlds and allowing individuals to focus on themselves. The site claims that, "with VR it is possible to reproduce complex and vast stimuli at the base of awe emergence." VR would enable a multi-level assessment of awe that could lead to a deep discovery of the emotion.
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This study examined using VR to support meditation from a positive technology perspective in order to see how technology can support well-being, self-empowerment, and engagement. The researchers had experienced meditators interact with a virtual meditation world, Santuarium, that was created specifically for this research. The results supported using virtual worlds to instill restorative natural environments. The participants reacted very positively to the landscape in terms of visual and sound characteristics. The results illustrated that Sanctuarium aided the meditation experience, much like guided meditation -- although participants particularly enjoyed the uniqueness of the virtual environment. The VR environment helped specifically with non-distraction, focus, and simplicity of design and instructions. Additionally, participants suggested that Sanctuarium would be a useful tool for inexperienced meditators as well.
Positive psychology focuses on helping us reach our full potential, not necessarily about fixing something that is broken. Much of positive psychology focuses on preventative care, such as some of the propositions in this article. This paper examines positive psychology's perspective on the psychological development and healing following a trauma such as sexual assault, especially in terms of resilience. Additionally, they suggest two essential positive psychology uses of VR environments: prevention of sexual assault of women and adolescents who have never been sexually assaulted as well as the prevention of psychiatric illnesses in women who have been victims of sexual assault.
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