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October 17 (UPI) – The new study suggests that virtual reality could be used to reinforce empathy. The tool could be used to encourage tolerance and acceptance of marginalized groups.
Empathy is the ability to understand and understand other points of view, thoughts and emotions of others. Studies show that higher levels of empathy are related to altruistic behavior.
For research purposes, behavioral psychologists sometimes encourage empathy by asking study participants to adopt the perspective of other people. For the new study, researchers at Stanford University used virtual reality to induce empathy.
Scientists have hypothesized that virtual reality would reinforce the stimulating effects of empathy of perspective-taking tasks. For their experience, researchers recruited 500 participants to learn more about homelessness.
Different groups of participants learned about homelessness in different ways. Some simply read a story about homelessness, a traditional perspective-taking task. For some participants, the narrative was accompanied by an interactive 2D experience on a computer. Others have experienced the story through a virtual reality system.
Virtual reality systems feature a headset and offer an immersive and interactive sensory experience, using visual and sound elements to simulate a 3D environment.
After taking their points of view, participants were asked about their empathy for the homeless and asked to sign a petition for these people. Participants who experienced the story in virtual reality were more likely to sign the petition than those who read the story or experienced a 2D simulation.
Participants who read a booklet on homelessness were just as likely to sign the petition as participants in virtual reality, suggesting that educational materials can be just as effective in encouraging altruistic behavior.
However, follow-up surveys revealed that virtual reality participants were most likely to report empathy to homeless populations eight weeks after the initial perspective-taking task.
"The main result of this research is that taking the perspective of others in virtual reality, in this case the prospect of a homeless person, produces more empathy and pro-social behaviors immediately after the first one." experience of virtual reality and better attitudes towards the months compared to a traditional perspective taking, "said researcher Fernanda Herrera in a press release.
The researchers published the results of their empathic experiences this week in the journal PLOS One. The authors of the new study acknowledged that some participants may have been distracted by the novelty of the virtual reality experience.
Participants were also not asked about their attitudes towards the homeless population prior to the experiments. Some participants probably entered the experience with preconceived prejudices.
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