In this study, we think we have discovered a new phenomenon specific to social virtual environments. It is closely related to the subjective individual sense of embodiment in VR, but it is not the same. It is an intersubjective state in the sense that it depends on what others do, look like or what meanings they negotiate together. It is a sensory and a symbolic state of being a virtual group.

Eugene Kukshinov and Lennart E. Nacke. 2025. Collective Embodiment, or the Social Nature of the Sense of Embodiment in Social VR. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 187–199. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706370.3727895