The impact of virtual reality on emotional ambivalence: the role of managerial power

Abstract

Emotions are often experienced in both positive and negative forms, resulting in a state known as emotional ambivalence. Although emotional ambivalence is a well-established construct in psychological research and has started gaining attention from management studies, it remains underexplored in other fields, such as technology research –particularly in relation to immersive technologies. This interdisciplinary study addresses this gap by integrating psychological, management, and information technology literature through an experiment involving 190 workers (managers and non-managers) who were exposed to emotional stimuli using immersive technology (virtual reality). The experiment measured each individual’s expressed emotional ambivalence and revealed that: (i) virtual reality reduces emotional ambivalence in non-managers, especially for those with higher levels of pre-existing emotional ambivalence, and (ii) virtual reality produces little emotional response in managers. These findings contribute to the study of immersive technologies by offering insights into the emotional experiences of managers and non-managers and support theoretical arguments linking power and emotional responses. This study further contributes to the literature by integrating the concept of emotional ambivalence into research on virtual reality and emotions. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the mediating role of managerial power in the relationship between virtual reality and emotional response.