Fig. 2.

Example trial of a person-identity-matching task. Two pairs of faces were presented simultaneously, forming a 2 × 2 grid of 4 faces. Each pair consisted of two individuals, one displaying a neutral expression and the other expressing disgust. In the neutral variant of this PIM task, participants were instructed to ignore the faces with a disgusted expression and only pay attention to the neutral faces in order to identify whether the two neutral faces belonged to the same individual (identity match). The participants used the controller joystick to respond by pushing it left for ‘yes/same’ and right for ‘no/different’. If the participants responded correctly, the background of the VR environment would flash green, whereas if they responded incorrectly it would flash red. A new trial began with the top pair of faces rotating out of the grid, the bottom pair rotating to the top, and a new pair of faces appearing at the bottom.