Moreno-Fernández, R.D.Reyes-Rubio, C.Fernández-Moreno, Á.Sampedro-Piquero, P.Benedicto-Duque, C.Roncero, D.2026-07-282026-07-282026-05Moreno-Fernández, R. D., Reyes-Rubio, C., Fernández-Moreno, Á., Sampedro-Piquero, P., Benedicto-Duque, C., & Roncero, D. (2026). Virtual reality for addressing aggression and psychophysiological responses in youth: Early evidence from a pilot study. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 22, 101116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2026.101116https://hdl.handle.net/10641/8112Conflict among socially vulnerable youth is a multifaceted phenomenon, with aggression and substance use representing components that carries profound psychological, social, and health consequences and thus constitutes a key target for clinical intervention. Traditional assessment and treatment approaches often face limitations in addressing the complexity of aggressive responses in ecologically valid contexts. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising complementary tool for at-risk youth, providing immersive, controlled, and safe environments to evaluate and intervene in biopsychosocial processes underlying aggression. Thus, this pilot study aimed to explore and validate the use of VR to address aggression among youth. 54 participants included a nonclinical young adult group (NCYA, n = 42; age 19.69 ± 1.51 years) and a clinical adolescent group (CA, n = 12; 15.58 ± 0.99 years) and were exposed to three VR scenario involving emotional recognition, ambiguous social situations, and anger management challenge (referred as GINSO-VR). Psychological variables—including aggression (AQ, RPQ), anger state (STAXI-S), emotion regulation difficulties (DERS), drug consumption (AUDIT, CAST), emotional state (SAM) and behavior during GINSO-VR—as well as biological variables (EEG, heart rate variability and salivary cortisol, testosterone, and alpha-amylase) were assessed, together with VR presence questionnaires (PQ, MPS) and Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Results revealed statistically significant VR-related pre-post changes. Importantly, biological markers accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in post-session anger state (R2 = 0.875, p < 0.001) in the NCYA group and served as statistical mediators and moderators of the relationship between VR exposure and reactive/proactive aggression. These findings suggest that GINSO-VR can be a complementary tool for therapeutic interventions targeting aggression in this population.engAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/AgresiónRealidad virtualPsicofisiologíaEstrésJóvenesjournal articleopen access10.1016/j.chbr.2026.101116