Training police officers with a virtual-reality game can significantly improve their ability to regulate stress, even in realistic, high-pressure situations. The VR game, developed at the Donders Institute at Radboud University, has already been integrated into several police training programmes.
For the study, Floris Klumpers - associate professor at the Behavioural Science Institute and neuroscientist at the Donders Institute - worked with a team of researchers to train 100 police instructors using a VR scenario. In the game, participants were confronted by zombie-like figures in a car park and they had to shoot them. ’They received live biofeedback: if their heart rate was too low, their field of vision narrowed and they couldn’t continue playing’, Klumpers explains.
Heart rhythm reflects the variability between beats. Under stress, heart rate typically rises while variability decreases. ’From an evolutionary perspective, that’s useful’, Klumpers says. ’It ensures a steady supply of oxygen so you can quickly choose to fight or flee. But for police officers, who must make deliberate, well-considered decisions, too much stress is counterproductive.’ Officers could only continue playing once their heart rate increased. ’So they had to learn to override their evolutionary response.’
The approach proved highly effective. By using breathing techniques, officers learned to raise their heart rate. ’For most, this meant inhaling quickly through the nose and exhaling slowly through the mouth. But some found other techniques worked better. They had to discover and apply what suited them.’
Realistic situations
To test whether the strategy also worked outside the game, the researchers applied it during a shooting test. In this exercise, officers must rapidly decide whether to shoot a figure that suddenly appears on a digital screen. ’Here too, we saw that participants trained with our game had a significantly higher heart rate than those who played without biofeedback - about 35% higher’, Klumpers says.
The game is already used in several police training programmes, and the goal is to implement it throughout the police academy. ’The instructors who took part in the study were eager to adopt the version we used right away. We’re now developing improved versions.’
At-risk youth
Klumpers is also collaborating with a broad network of social and academic partners to explore whether this method could benefit other groups that might gain from better stress regulation, such as at-risk youth. ’In the future, we’ll be studying two groups that increasingly find themselves on opposite sides of social tensions: police officers and young people with a history of aggression. It would be fantastic if we could help both groups manage their stress responses.’
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Literature referenceMichela, A., van Peer, J. M., Oostenveld, R., Dorrestijn, W., Smit, A. S., Granic, I., Roelofs, K., & Klumpers, F. (2025). Preparing the heart for duty: Virtual reality biofeedback in an arousing action game improves in-action voluntary heart rate variability control in experienced police. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1109/taffc.2025.3619161
