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Virtual Reality as a Tool to Facilitate Empathy: Embodied Simulations and Perspective Taking in the Body of Another
Abstract and Figures
Research paradigms for stimulating empathic responses in virtual reality change perceived self-other overlap through illusions that cause users to experience their own body as a virtual avatar with a different type of body. Virtual Alterity paradigms involve sharing aspects of another real person's first-person experience in interactive virtual environments. In this thesis, I define empathy as an other-directed emotion motivating concern for another's welfare, and argue that virtual alterity systems are better designed to facilitate empathy when conceived in this way, as compared to avatar illusions in VR.
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... Slater et al. argue that 1PP creates significantly higher levels of empathy through a transfer of self. Linda Joy Gerry, and the Machine to Be Another project (Gerry, 2017) presented a gender swap experience to facilitate such empathy. Jerry argues for 'Virtual Alterity' -a process that activates both automatic and volitional (active) empathic processes by maintaining a self-other distinction that is not present in Slater's work. ...
... Image 1: Photo of The Machine to Be Another's Gender Swap experience. (Gerry, 2017) OPENING THE DOOR IN QUESTION Image 2: Image from The Wearable (Kanary Nikolov(a), 2016) On the whole, clinical simulations appear to focus on a symptomology of psychotic experience, such as 'voice hearing' (Riches et al., 2018;Tabar, 2007;Wieland Diane et al., 2014), fractured vision (Kanary Nikolov(a), 2016) or delayed event-based reaction times (Spanlang et al., 2019). The latter was a VR experiment used by Spanlang et al. to argue that their simulation had the effect of 'fragmenting the consciousness of healthy participants'. ...
The Rosetta Wheel framework is a framework for design teams to guide the development of games for health behaviour change. The framework is grounded in evidence-based research of the psychology of behaviour change. It is further informed by game analysis and expert design techniques in order to understand how psychological processes map with game design patterns.
The Rosetta Wheel has 10 Change Keys, assisting design teams to create game mechanics which foster the psychological processes of change, alongside 19 Key Considerations which support the overall development process.
The presentation will cover the research process that led to the development of the framework, along with an overview of the Rosetta Wheel Framework, and will finish off by introducing some implementation ideas of how the framework can be applied in practice.
... Although the effectiveness of IVR to improve empathy is already well established (Farmer & Maister, 2017;Gerry, 2017;Herrera et al., 2018;Kleinsmith et al., 2015;Shin, 2018), deciphering the underlying mechanisms of changes has received only limited attention beyond a few empirical investigations (Ahn et al., 2013;Schutte & Stilinovi� c, 2017;Shin, 2018) and theoretical explorations (Bertrand, Guegan, Robieux, McCall, & Zenasni, 2018;Ibrahim & Ang, 2018). From this literature, several contributing factors have been outlined (e.g., Bertrand et al., 2018), but five appear particularly pivotal. ...
... First, it is important to note that the findings of this study further validate a solid line of research that has demonstrated the effectiveness of IVR modality to trigger empathy change (Farmer & Maister, 2017;Gerry, 2017;Herrera et al., 2018;Kleinsmith et al., 2015;Shin, 2018). However, contrary to the common approach in this line of work, the present study did not address immediate empathy change in response to a directly empathy-evoking media content. ...
Recent research has emphasized the promise of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) to bolster empathy. The underlying mechanisms of such an intriguing outcome are, however, underexplored. The present study examines the effect of distinct but interrelated user experiences (UX) dimensions underlying the bolstering effect of IVR on empathy. Sixty-five young adults participated in five 1-h weekly programs encompassing a total of 25 IVR experiences of different nature. Following each session, participants rated their UX of immersion-presence, illusion of body ownership, illusion of agency, engagement, and IVR-triggered mind-wandering for each IVR experience. Baseline empathy, operationalized in a multifaceted fashion, was measured both before and after the IVR program, spanning a total of seven weeks. Empathy significantly increased after the program with a moderate effect size (d = .52). Further, 27.6% of the variance in empathy change was explained by the combined effect of the UX variables. The largest predictors were illusion of body ownership and agency. The pattern of results was the same across types of IVR experience, suggesting that media content (whether empathy-evoking or not), did not moderate the relationship between UX and empathy. Together, this study highlights that IVR is more an effective “perspective taking-machine” than “empathy machine” per se.
Like no other medium, virtual reality (VR) offers new possibilities to alter the perception of reality. These possibilities are mainly related to the feeling of presence in a virtual environment. With the VR performance ‘The Machine to be Another’ (TMTBA), we find an innovative embodiment system that enables a virtual body swap between two users. Hence, we conceptualise the performance as some kind of breaching experiment in order to alter self- and body perception. With the use of TMTBA and a qualitative research approach, we hope to gain a closer insight into the formation, alteration and persistence of body images. This challenges the phenomenological idea that our sense of bodily presence is essentially anchored in our physical or ‘objective’ body as we know it and seems to potentially expand our notion of what bodily presence can mean.
The Machine to Be Another' is an embodiment system designed to address the relation between identity and empathy. The project merges performances with protocols of neuroscience experiments, in order to offer users an immersive experience of seeing themselves in the body of another person. The paper reports the methods and partial results of the interdisciplinary qualitative investigation that we are making on low budget approach to stimulate empathy through embodied interaction between individuals.
People generally show greater preference for members of their own racial group compared to racial out-group members. This type of ‘in-group bias’ is evident in mimicry behaviors. We tend to automatically mimic the behaviors of in-group members, and this behavior is associated with interpersonal sensitivity and empathy. However, mimicry is reduced when interacting with out-group members. Although race is considered an unchangeable trait, it is possible using embodiment in immersive virtual reality to engender the illusion in people of having a body of a different race. Previous research has used this technique to show that after a short period of embodiment of White people in a Black virtual body their implicit racial bias against Black people diminishes. Here we show that this technique powerfully enhances mimicry. We carried out an experiment with 32 White (Caucasian) female participants. Half were embodied in a White virtual body and the remainder in a Black virtual body. Each interacted in two different sessions with a White and a Black virtual character, in counterbalanced order. The results show that dyads with the same virtual body skin color expressed greater mimicry than those of different color. Importantly, this effect occurred depending on the virtual body’s race, not participants’ actual racial group. When embodied in a Black virtual body, White participants treat Black as their novel in-group and Whites become their novel out-group. This reversed in-group bias effect was obtained regardless of participants’ level of implicit racial bias. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this surprising psychological phenomenon.
Self-location—the sense of where I am in space—provides an experiential anchor for one's interaction with the environment. In the studies of full-body illusions, many researchers have defined self-location solely in terms of body-location—the subjective feeling of where my body is. Although this view is useful, there is an issue regarding whether it can fully accommodate the role of 1PP-location—the sense of where my first-person perspective is located in space. In this study, we investigate self-location by comparing body-location and 1PP-location: using a head-mounted display (HMD) and a stereo camera, the subjects watched their own body standing in front of them and received tactile stimulations. We manipulated their senses of body-location and 1PP-location in three different conditions: the participants standing still (Basic condition), asking them to move forward (Walking condition), and swiftly moving the stereo camera away from their body (Visual condition). In the Walking condition, the participants watched their body moving away from their 1PP. In the Visual condition, the scene seen via the HMD was systematically receding. Our data show that, under different manipulations of movement, the spatial unity between 1PP-location and body-location can be temporarily interrupted. Interestingly, we also observed a “double-body effect.” We further suggest that it is better to consider body-location and 1PP-location as interrelated but distinct factors that jointly support the sense of self-location.
While nothing can be more vivid, immediate and real than our own sensorial experiences, emerging virtual reality technologies are playing with the possibility of being able to share someone else's sensory reality. The Painter Project is a virtual environment where users see a video from a painter's point of view in tandem with a tracked rendering of their own hand while they paint on a physical canvas. The end result is an experiment in superimposition of one experiential reality on top of another, hopefully opening a new window into an artist's creative process. This explorative study tested this virtual environment on stimulating empathy and creativity. The findings indicate potential for this technology as a new expert-novice mentorship simulation.
Immersive virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person’s real body by a life-sized virtual body (VB) that is seen from first person perspective. Using real-time motion capture the VB can be programmed to move synchronously with the real body (visuomotor synchrony), and also virtual objects seen to strike the VB can be felt through corresponding vibrotactile stimulation on the actual body (visuotactile synchrony). This setup typically gives rise to a strong perceptual illusion of ownership over the VB. When the viewpoint is lifted up and out of the VB so that it is seen below this may result in an out-of-body experience (OBE). In a two-factor between-groups experiment with 16 female participants per group we tested how fear of death might be influenced by two different methods for producing an OBE. In an initial embodiment phase where both groups experienced the same multisensory stimuli there was a strong feeling of body ownership. Then the viewpoint was lifted up and behind the VB. In the experimental group once the viewpoint was out of the VB there was no further connection with it (no visuomotor or visuotactile synchrony). In a control condition, although the viewpoint was in the identical place as in the experimental group, visuomotor and visuotactile synchrony continued. While both groups reported high scores on a question about their OBE illusion, the experimental group had a greater feeling of disownership towards the VB below compared to the control group, in line with previous findings. Fear of death in the experimental group was found to be lower than in the control group. This is in line with previous reports that naturally occurring OBEs are often associated with enhanced belief in life after death.
Importance:
Loneliness is a risk factor for depression and other illnesses and may be caused and reinforced by maladaptive social cognition. Secularized classical meditation training programs address social cognition, but practice typically occurs alone. Little is known about the effectiveness of contemplative practice performed in dyads.
Objective:
To introduce and assess the effectiveness of contemplative dyadic practices relative to classical-solitary meditation with regard to engagement and perceived social connectedness.
Design, setting, and participants:
The ReSource Project was a 9-month open-label efficacy trial of three, 3-month secularized mental training modules. Replacement randomization was used to assign 362 healthy participants in Leipzig and Berlin, Germany. Eligible participants were recruited between November 11, 2012, and February 13, 2013, and between November 13, 2013, and April 30, 2014. Intention-to-treat analyses were conducted.
Interventions:
Breathing meditation and body scan (the presence module), loving-kindness meditation and affect dyad (the affect module), and observing-thoughts meditation and perspective dyad (the perspective module).
Main outcomes and measures:
Primary outcomes were self-disclosure and social closeness. Engagement measures included compliance (ie, the mean [95% margin of error] number of meditation sessions that a participant engaged in per week), liking, and motivation to practice.
Results:
Thirty participants dropped out after assignment to 3 experimental groups; 90 participants were assigned to a retest control that did not complete the main outcome measures; 16 participants provided no state-change data for the affect and perspective modules (226 remaining participants; mean age of 41.15 years; 59.3% female). Results are aggregated across training cohorts. Compliance was similar across the modules: loving-kindness meditation (3.78 [0.18] sessions), affect dyad (3.59 [0.14] sessions), observing-thoughts meditation (3.63 [0.20] sessions), and perspective dyad (3.24 [0.18] sessions). Motivation was higher for meditation (11.20 [0.40] sessions) than the dyads (9.26 [0.43] sessions) and was higher for the affect dyad (10.11 [0.46] sessions) than the perspective dyad (8.41 [0.46] sessions). Social closeness increased during a session for the affect dyad (1.49 [0.12] sessions) and the perspective dyad (1.06 [0.12] sessions) and increased over time for the affect dyad (slope of 0.016 [0.003]) and the perspective dyad (slope of 0.012 [0.003]). Self-disclosure increased over time for the affect dyad (slope of 0.023 [0.004]) and the perspective dyad (slope of 0.006 [0.005]), increasing more steeply for the affect dyad (P < .001).
Conclusions and relevance:
Contemplative dyads elicited engagement similar to classical contemplative practices and increased perceived social connectedness. Contemplative dyads represent a new type of intervention targeting social connectedness and intersubjective capacities deficient in participants who experience loneliness and in many psychopathologies.
Trial registration:
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01833104.
The experiment described in this paper is performed within a system that provides a human with the possibility and capability to be physically immersed in the body of an android robot, Geminoid HI-2. The participant, through the swapped body of Geminoid HI-2, is able to see his/her own body in front of themselves like a reflection in a mirror -- then they can touch their own body by the hands of the Geminoid HI-2. We are investigating how the sense of body-ownership is generated during visual and tactile tests and how the presence of agency impacts one's body-ownership.
Despite the enthusiasm around social-emotional learning, the vast number of skills, dispositions, and attitudes we hope to infuse into students will overwhelm even the most ambitious schools. However, a single core capacity underlies a great many social-emotional learning outcomes: social perspective taking. Recent research on this process of “reading” others — figuring out their thoughts, feelings, and motivations — suggests that we now know enough to teach this capacity to students. By helping youth engage in this process regularly as “detectives” rather than “judges” and providing them with feedback, a constellation of social-emotional learnings will blossom.