Synchronous stroking or movement of a virtual body seen in front of a person can create an out-of-body experience, making the virtual body feel like their own. The effect of synchrony on explicit feelings of embodiment was stronger when the virtual body moved in sync with the person's own movements (visuomotor) than when it was stroked in sync (visuotactile). How far people drifted when walking after the experience depended on their interoceptive accuracy (IA), measured by a heartbeat counting task. For visuotactile conditions, the synchrony effect was larger in people with low IA, suggesting they relied more on visual information. For visuomotor conditions, the synchrony effect was larger in people with high IA, suggesting they relied more on feedback from their own movements.
Social exclusion reduces people's sense of agency and ownership over a virtual hand. In a virtual hand illusion experiment, participants who were excluded during a Cyberball game reported weaker feelings of ownership and agency and showed reduced physiological and behavioral measures of these experiences compared to included participants. Synchrony between the virtual hand and the participant's own hand strengthened both ownership and agency across all measures, but this effect was weaker for excluded individuals. The findings indicate that social context shapes fundamental aspects of self-perception.