Two primary goals of psychological science should be to understand what aspects of human psychology are universal and the way that context and culture produce variability. This requires that we take into account the importance of culture and context in the way that we write our papers and in the types of populations that we sample. However, most research published in our leading journals has relied on sampling WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations. One might expect that our scholarly work and editorial choices would by now reflect the knowledge that Western populations may not be representative of humans generally with respect to any given psychological phenomenon. However, as we show here, almost all research published by one of our leading journals,Psychological Science, relies on Western samples and uses these data in an unreflective way to make inferences about humans in general. To take us forward, we offer a set of concrete proposals for authors, journal editors, and reviewers that may lead to a psychological science that is more representative of the human condition.
Primary goals of psychological science should be to understand what aspects of human psychology are universal, and the way context and culture produce variability. This requires that we take into account the importance of culture and context in the way we write our papers and in the types of populations that we sample. Yet most research published in our leading journals has relied on sampling educated populations from the west. One might expect that our scholarly work and editorial choices would by now reflect the knowledge that western populations may not be representative of humans generally with respect to any given psychological phenomenon. Yet as we show here, almost all research published by one of our leading journals, Psychological Science, relies on western samples and, in an unreflective way, uses this data to make inferences about humans in general. To take us forward we offer a set of concrete proposals for authors, journal editors and reviewers that may lead to a psychological science that is more representative of the human condition.
Virtual Reality (VR) has been touted as an effective empathy intervention, with its most ardent supporters claiming it is "the ultimate empathy machine." We aimed to determine whether VR deserves this reputation, using a random-effects meta-analysis of all known studies that examined the effect of virtual reality experiences on users' empathy (k = 43 studies, with 5,644 participants). The results indicated that many different kinds of VR experiences can increase empathy, however, there are important boundary conditions to this effect. Subgroup analyses revealed that VR improved emotional empathy, but not cognitive empathy. In other words, VR can arouse compassionate feelings but does not appear to encourage users to imagine other peoples' perspectives. Further subgroup analyses revealed that VR was no more effective at increasing empathy than less technologically advanced empathy interventions such as reading about others and imagining their experiences. Finally, more immersive and interactive VR experiences were no more effective at arousing empathy than less expensive VR experiences such as cardboard headsets. Our results converge with existing research suggesting that different mechanisms underlie cognitive versus emotional empathy. It appears that emotional empathy can be aroused automatically when witnessing evocative stimuli in VR, but cognitive empathy may require more effortful engagement, such as using one's own imagination to construct others' experiences. Our results have important practical implications for nonprofits, policymakers, and practitioners who are considering using VR for prosocial purposes. In addition, we recommend that VR designers develop experiences that challenge people to engage in empathic effort.
We investigated the effects of long-term exposure to literary and popular fiction on attributional complexity, egocentric bias and accuracy. Results of a pre-registered study showed that exposure to literary fiction is positively associated with scores on the attributional complexity scale. Literary fiction is also associated with accuracy in mentalizing, measured via the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, and with accuracy in predicting average social attitudes. The predicted negative association between literary fiction and egocentric bias emerged only when education and gender were controlled for-a covariance analysis that was not pre-registered. Exposure to popular fiction is associated solely with attributional complexity, but negatively. We discuss the significance of these findings in the context of the emerging literature regarding the relationship between fiction and social cognition.
Virtual reality (VR) has become a readily available consumer technology, strengthening its promise as a research tool for health psychology. We identify five key strengths of VR‐based research: data collection, realism, experimental control, adaptability, and mobility (DREAM). We review how these advantages allow researchers to investigate behavioral, psychological, and social processes related to health and well‐being in novel ways, by using VR as both a stimulus and a measurement tool. We also describe challenges facing VR research and potential strategies researchers can use to mitigate them. In addition to reviewing existing research, we hope to inspire researchers to consider ways in which VR might be used in future to augment their own research programs or answer currently impracticable research questions in health psychology.
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