Tassinari Matilde, Aulbach Matthias Burkard, Jasinskaja-Lahti Inga
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 2;12:815497. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.815497. eCollection 2021.
Virtual Reality (VR) has often been referred to as an "empathy machine." This is mostly because it can induce empathy through embodiment experiences in outgroup membership. However, the potential of intergroup contact with an outgroup avatar in VR to increase empathy is less studied. Even though intergroup contact literature suggests that less threatening and more prosocial emotions are the key to understanding why intergroup contact is a powerful mean to decrease prejudice, few studies have investigated the effect of intergroup contact on empathy in VR. In this study, we developed a between-participants design to investigate how VR can be used to create a positive intergroup contact with a member of a stigmatized outgroup (ethnic minority) and present the results of the effect of intergroup contact in VR on empathy. Sixty four participants experienced either positive contact (i.e., equal intergroup status, collaborative) with a black (experimenter-controlled) avatar (experimental condition) or no intergroup contact (i.e., ingroup contact with a white avatar; control condition), with situational empathy (personal distress and empathic interest) being measured through a self-report questionnaire up to a week before and right after the VR contact experience. The experiment showed that satisfying degrees of body ownership of participants' own avatar and co-presence with the contacted avatar can be achieved in simple and universally accessible virtual environments such as AltspaceVR. The results indicated that while VR intergroup contact had no significant direct effect on empathy, exploratory analyses indicated that post-intervention empathic interest increased with stronger feelings of co-presence in the intergroup contact condition.
虚拟现实（VR）常被称为“共情机器”。这主要是因为它能够通过群体外成员身份的具身体验来引发共情。然而，在虚拟现实中与群体外化身进行群体间接触以增强共情的潜力却鲜有研究。尽管群体间接触的相关文献表明，威胁性较小且更具亲社会性质的情感是理解群体间接触为何是减少偏见的有力手段的关键，但很少有研究探讨群体间接触对虚拟现实中共情的影响。在本研究中，我们设计了一项被试间设计，以探究如何利用虚拟现实与一个被污名化的群体外成员（少数族裔）建立积极的群体间接触，并呈现虚拟现实中群体间接触对共情影响的结果。六十四名参与者要么与一个黑人（由实验者控制）化身进行积极接触（即群体间地位平等、合作）（实验组），要么不进行群体间接触（即与一个白人化身进行群体内接触；对照组），在虚拟现实接触体验前一周及体验后，通过一份自我报告问卷来测量情境共情（个人痛苦和共情兴趣）。实验表明，在诸如AltspaceVR这样简单且普遍可及的虚拟环境中，参与者对自己化身的身体所有权满意度以及与被接触化身的共在感都可以实现。结果表明，虽然虚拟现实中的群体间接触对共情没有显著的直接影响，但探索性分析表明，在群体间接触条件下，干预后的共情兴趣会随着更强的共在感而增加。
