How Does It Feel to Be a Woman Victim of Sexual Harassment? The Effect of 360°-Video-Based Virtual Reality on Empathy and Related Variables

Abstract

Sexual harassment (SH) occurs when people-mostly women-are targets of unwanted sexual comments, gestures, or actions associated with a lack of empathy on the part of the offender. Virtual Reality (VR) has been defined as the ''ultimate empathy machine'' because it allows the user to take other people's perspective. The present work aims to study the effect of a 360°-video-based VR experience (vs. traditional perspective-taking task) on empathy and related concepts (i.e., violent attitude, perspective taking, sense of oneness) toward a female victim of SH in a male sample. A within-subjects design was used with 44 men who experienced both conditions (360°and narrative). Results showed the superiority of the 360°-video experience over the narrative in increasing empathy, sense of oneness, and perspective taking toward a female victim of SH. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

“In the shoes of another”: immersive technology for social and emotional learning

“…IVEs have been used to evaluate perspective-taking in previous studies (Shin, 2021;Ventura et al, 2021;Christofi, Michael-Grigoriou & Kyrlitsias, 2020;Hamilton-Giachritsis et al, 2018;Ahn et al, 2016;Ahn, Le & Bailenson, 2013). They are known to offer users more graphic and detailed visual information regarding their targets' perspectives (Ahn, Le & Bailenson, 2013;Ahn et al, 2016) and this aids in users' imaginations (Oh et al, 2016) as it provides them with more realistic information regarding their targets' situations (Ahn, Le, & Bailenson, 2013;Nilsson, Nordahl & Serafin, 2016).…”

“…Commonly touted as "empathy machines," IVEs facilitate the experience of events from others' perspectives (Milk, 2015;Thériault et al, 2021), and this can consequently generate empathy (Hamilton-Giachritsis et al, 2018;Herrera et al, 2018). IVEs can generate empathy in users as evidenced in many studies (Ahn et al, 2016;Oh et al, 2016;Bertrand et al, 2018;Herrera et al, 2018;Hamilton-Giachritsis et al, 2018;Shin, 2018;Wiederhold, 2020;Mado et al, 2021;Thériault et al, 2021;Ventura et al, 2021) and this is achieved by facilitating embodiment. Embodiment occurs when individuals feel as though they are experiencing events first-hand (Shin, 2018;Ahn, Le & Bailenson, 2013), and it may even involve them perceiving that they are inhibiting the body of the protagonist, in more extreme cases; this is a phenomenon known as body transfer (Ahn et al, 2016;Mado et al, 2021;Slater et al, 2010;Kilteni et al, 2012;Wiederhold, 2020).…”

“…Embodiment occurs when individuals feel as though they are experiencing events first-hand (Shin, 2018;Ahn, Le & Bailenson, 2013), and it may even involve them perceiving that they are inhibiting the body of the protagonist, in more extreme cases; this is a phenomenon known as body transfer (Ahn et al, 2016;Mado et al, 2021;Slater et al, 2010;Kilteni et al, 2012;Wiederhold, 2020). Given that users can take their targets' perspectives through IVEs with relative ease for reasons mentioned earlier, and that perspective taking may result in experiencing greater empathy (Mado et al, 2021;Chambers & Davis, 2012), IVE users may consequently experience higher levels of empathy for their targets, in comparison to other conventional modalities such as pen-and-paper mental simulation (Ventura et al, 2021, Herrera et al, 2018and Oh et al, 2016. The positive effects that IVEs have on empathy consequently mean that IVEs can potentially be useful in moral education, particularly in terms of fostering concern for marginalized groups like racial minorities, transgender people, refugees, the homeless, and people with disabilities (Thériault et al, 2021;Mado et al, 2021;Christofi, Michael-Grigoriou & Kyrlitsias, 2020;Rogers, 2020;Shin, 2018).…”

From Digital Media to Empathic Reality: A Systematic Review of Empathy Research in Extended Reality Environments

“…Then, 19 studies (28%) used one-to-many relationships, 6 studies (9%) used many-to-many relationships, and 2 studies (<2%) used many-to-one relationships. To highlight one-to-many relationships, studies used a classroom bullying scenario through the eyes of the teacher or the person being bullied [117], experience of multiple occasions of sexual harassment [129], and an educational approach to teach different religious practises [60]. Many-to-many relationships focused on a more complex setup of users in an empathy situation.…”

AR Exhibitions for Sensitive Narratives: Designing an Immersive Exhibition for the Museum of Memory in Colombia

“…One example is the red cross simulation in AR [40] which immerses users in simulations of the violence experienced by a victim. Outside of AR, we can fnd examples in VR frst-person perspectives of violent situations lived by a refugee [71], an African American man [6], a victim of sexual harassment [128], or an eyewitness of an emergency at a Los Angeles food bank [3]. Here we refected on how digitally superimposing personal identifying elements can blur the lines of the audience's privilege concerning the victims.…”