Sharing the Space With the “Victim” Can Increase Help Rates. A Study With Virtual Reality

Abstract

A typical protocol for the psychological study of helping behavior features two core roles: a help seeker suffering from some personal or situational emergency (often called “victim”) and a potential helper. The setting of these studies is such that the victim and the helper often share the same space. We wondered whether this spatial arrangement might affect the help rate. Thus, we designed a simple study with virtual reality in which space sharing could be manipulated. The participant plays the role of a potential helper; the victim is a humanoid located inside the virtual building. When the request for help is issued, the participant can be either in the same spatial region as the victim (the virtual building) or outside it. The effect of space was tested in two kinds of emergencies: a mere request for help and a request for help during a fire. The analysis shows that, in both kinds of emergencies, the participants were more likely to help the victim when sharing the space with it. This study suggests controlling the spatial arrangement when investigating helping behavior. It also illustrates the expediency of virtual reality to further investigate the role of space on pro-social behavior during emergencies.

Advancing prosociality in extended reality: systematic review of the use of embodied virtual agents to trigger prosocial behaviour in extended reality

“…Further investigation is needed to better understand the specific factors that influence empathy in VR intergroup interactions. Supporting this notion (Rosenberg et al, 2013;Spagnolli et al, 2021), revealed that the use of humanoid avatars increased participants' propensity to help in moral decision-making scenarios. Collectively, these studies highlight the potential of EVAs to promote positive social norms and behaviours in interactions with VCs.…”

“…Of particular relevance, a study by (Spagnolli et al, 2021) demonstrated that co-location in VR positively influences prosocial behaviour. Participants sharing a VR environment with a virtual victim exhibited increased helping behaviour, regardless of the emergency type (plea for assistance or ongoing virtual fire).…”

“…Interaction with a virtual robot includes volunteering to complete a task for a robot (moving cubes) (Chenlin et al, 2023) and saving a robot (Ho and Ng, 2022). Several studies have examined different scenarios to promote helping behaviour, such as assisting an avatar as a superhero (Rosenberg et al, 2013), sharing the space with a victim and providing help (Spagnolli et al, 2021), making decisions about helping based on ethnicity and social appearance (D'Errico et al, 2019), and to help an individual belonging to an outgroup member in terms of ethnicity (D'Errico et al, 2019).…”