The Science of Seeing Differently Through Virtual Reality |
Virtual reality can place people inside the lived experience of bias rather than asking them to imagine it.
Some virtual experiences meant to dissolve prejudice can backfire, reinforcing the biases they aim to reduce.
Understanding when and for whom virtual experiences may backfire is essential for responsible VR research.
You look down, and something feels wrong. The hands in front of you are not the ones you are used to, and when you catch your reflection, it is a different face that meets your gaze—one capable of changing how others respond to you.
People look at you differently, speak to you differently, and react to the same words and gestures in ways that feel unfamiliar, as if the rules of the interaction have changed without anyone explaining why.
Nothing else in the environment has changed, and yet your experience of it has. What has changed is who you are within it, or at least who others believe you to be.
Except you’re not there, but wearing a headset.
Over the past decades, psychologists have begun using virtual reality (VR) to investigate one of the most persistent features of human life: how we relate to people who belong to groups different from our own. From racial prejudice to political polarization, intergroup tensions shape societies across the world. Now researchers are asking whether immersive technology might help us understand and improve those relationships.
The answer, it turns out, is complicated.
A Laboratory for Social Encounters
For decades,........