Can Virtual Reality Improve the Progressive Muscular Relaxation Technique Efficacy?

The purposes of the current research project are as follows: 1. investigate if the PMRT associated with a personalized-relaxing scenario in VR can facilitate the recalling of the relaxing image in the real world than the standard procedure (consisting of PMRT associated with the in-imagination exposure to a comfortable subjective context). The investigators assume that VR would be more efficient than in-imagination since it would make easy the visualization process favor people cope with more realistic sensory experiences than in-imagination exposure. Accordingly, the VR exposure would elicit the strongest association between the relaxation procedure (neutral stimulus, NS) and the relaxing context in VR (conditioning stimulus, CS); 2. whether exposure to a personalized VREs has a more significant impact on anxiety, depression, stress, sense of presence, and quality of psychological well-being; these constructs are investigated by comparing the participants' performance on self-report questionnaires (described in the next section), before the start of the training (T0; baseline), at the end of all the four relaxing sessions, one week after the end of relaxation sessions (T1; day 7), and during follow up (T2; day 14); 3. if the relaxing sessions administered via Zoom are more proper for managing anxiety and stress than a procedure learned via an audio registration. Considering the ability to generate vivid visual images is positively associated with the capacity to feel present in a virtual world, all the participants are asked to fulfill two questionnaires before the VR or the Guided Imagery exposure to investigate the vividness and the capacity to control mental images respectively, and to control the impact of these two dependent variables on the sense of presence self-reported after the in imagination or VR exposure.