well hello everyone first of all I want
to say thank you for being here thank
you for those who waited for this to
start my name is Fernanda arena and I am
a PhD student in the communication
department at Stanford I work in the
virtual human interaction lab and
basically what I do is I research the
psychological and social effects of
virtual reality experiences so before we
actually get started today I want to go
over what we actually know from past
research with empirical data about the
effectiveness of these experiences and
before I actually get to that I think
it's really important for us to have a
shared definition of what empathy is in
the literature and even in everyday life
people define empathy in very many
different ways and they also use a lot
of terms interchangeably so you hear
compassion pity kindness sympathy and
people use this words in very many
different ways but they all have
different meanings and the psychological
implications of using each one of these
words is different so before I actually
talk about what VR can do to increase
empathy I want to share with you what
the definition that I use then that we
use in my lab so that is the ability to
perceive understand and experience the
emotions of others so now that you guys
know what I mean when I say empathy
let's talk about empathy and VR so in
2015 Chris Knoll gave a TED Talk
which he talked about virtual reality
as the ultimate empathy machine since it
allows everyone to basically experience
anything from any other person's point
of view
however there's actually very little
research in this area especially
research linking VR experiences to
increased empathy in psychology though
Dan Batson is has demonstrated in a long
line of research that taking the
perspective of others can actually lead
to increased empathy so in other words
when we imagine what it is like to
become a member of a stigmatized group
we become more empathetic not only
towards that person but towards the
stigmatized group as a whole and this
increase in empathy can lead to an
altruistic motivation to help
so Dan Batson uses perspective-taking
to increase empathy and it turns out
that VR is a great medium to perform
perspective-taking tasks berna the
reason and for those of you who may not
be familiar is VR systems work by
replacing the perceptual input of the
real world what we see what we hear and
sometimes what we feel and what we smell
with perceptual input from the virtual
world this allows us to place users or
participants into basically any
environment and have them experience
anything the immersive qualities of VR
also allow us to leverage what's called
psychological presence which is whenever
the user or the participant feels like
they're actually in that environment
this allows the user to have visceral
and vivid experiences in the virtual
world kind of like they would in the
real world we're also able to leverage
what's called body transfer so in
virtual reality experiences people are
usually embodying an avatar and this
avatar does not always match what we
actually look like in the real world so
in Avatar maybe taller shorter have a
different body shape it could be a
different sex it could be a different
gender it could also be a different skin
tone and what research shows is that
even when we embody these avatars that
do not match perfectly what we actually
look like in the real world we start
taking ownership over these virtual
bodies so these new features these new
characteristics start becoming part of
our own body schema and we take
ownership of it and then we turn we walk
around a virtual world we interact with
it and we actually start having embodied
cognition meaning we start thinking
about ourselves with these new features
that we've acquired in the virtual world
another reason perspective-taking in VR
works is because of the fact that
cognitive resources are better allocated
and the traditional perspective taking
tasks that Dan Batson did he basically
just asked people to imagine what it
would be like to be somebody else
which can be a really good thing or if
you are not totally
warm then you have negative biases or
stereotypes may not actually be really
helpful in VR we're able to do the
research and actually show people what
it would be like to be somebody else
without them having to rely on their
biases and without them having to first
imagine what it would be like and then
imagine what it would feel like people
would just get to experience what we're
able to show them through the VR
experience as this new version of
themselves
so we then back these sets
perspective-taking works
it increases empathy and we know that VR
is a really good perspective taking
medium so you think that you just be
able to create virtual reality
experiences that actually increase
empathy but that is not the case it
turns out that promoting empathy even
when you're using VR as a tool can be
really hard and I want to talk about a
couple of reasons why the first one is
we have what are called token members if
we receive information about someone
else who goes that goes against our
stereotypes or biases sometimes we may
think of that person as the exception to
the rule instead of actually using the
information we've learned to weaken or
biases and actually change our minds and
change our stereotypes another reason
it's hard to promote empathy it's
because sometimes people feel that
people are in that other people are in
certain situations and it's their own
fault so research has shown that it's
actually really hard to empathize with
the homeless because most people think
that people are homeless because they're
lazy or because they didn't work hard
enough or because they're not trying
hard enough
and finally what if helping somebody
else is the tremendo to you or to your
own groups relative advantage research
has shown that in competitive settings
taking the perspective of somebody else
even someone who's in a different team
will actually lead to detrimental
effects and even unethical behaviors so
whenever we're trying to use VR to
leverage empathy we have to be very
careful about the way that we do it and
make sure that we're not actually
causing people to be less empathetic
towards the group that we wanted them to
be more in - and I want to highlight the
effect of competition on
respective taking a little bit further
by talking about two studies that
actually used VR interventions to try to
reduce racial biases so in these two
studies researchers asked light-skinned
participants to embody dark-skinned
avatars in a virtual environment
so the first study took place in
Barcelona Mills later and his team asked
light-skinned Spanish women to embody
dark-skinned avatars and then in the
environment for about ten minutes they
just walked around they got to explore
the environment they saw other avatars
in the world and then they measure their
increase in racial biases and what they
found is that the participants who were
in light-skinned and embodied
dark-skinned avatars actually had
reduced racial biases compared to the
light-skinned people who embodied
light-skinned avatars now in a very
similar study that was conducted in the
u.s. crewman Ellison asked why
participants to embody dark-skinned
avatars and instead of having them roam
around the environment what actually
happened is they were put into an
interview setting so they were kind of
competing for a job and what this study
showed was the participants who were
white and embodied a black avatar
actually had greater racial biases
towards black Americans than the people
who were white and embodied white
avatars so these are two very similar
studies they were just testing what
would happen when someone who's white
embodies a black avatar but they did it
in different places and in different
contexts so these are two very important
things to notice whenever you're
creating a VR experience you have to be
aware of who your audience is and what
their stereotypes and biases in general
are being dark-skinned and Spain can
mean something very different than being
dark-skinned in America another major
difference is the tasks that they had
participants complete and the Barcelona
study people had just got to explore and
be themselves as this new version of
themselves
but in the u.s. study people had to
compete for a position and that was
actually really detrimental so this is
an example of how a well-intentioned
intervention actually ended up
reinforcing racial biases now I want to
briefly go over some of the work that
we've done in the lab so for one of our
studies we had participants come into
the lab and we put them inside a virtual
city the city that you see on the screen
and we told them that there was an
emergency in the city and that it had
been evacuated but there was one child
left behind and it was their job to save
him in order to give him the medicine
that he needed so we had participants
either embody a superhero fly around the
city like Superman full-on arms out and
search for the child and then we had the
other half of the participants just fly
around a helicopter to find the child
we told the participants of the study
was over however we staged an accident
and we videotaped their response that
the participants had the people who
embodied Superman who flew around like a
superhero actually got up to help faster
and helped more thoroughly than the
people who just flew around in a
helicopter so this is an example of how
embodying somebody who we believe to be
helpful can actually make us more
helpful in the real world in a different
study we were trying to see if we could
reduce prejudice towards the elderly see
we could reduce ageism and we had
participants embody an older version of
themselves in VR or just look at a
picture of an older person and imagine
what it would be like to be old and in
the first study we see that participants
who embodied an older avatar actually
ended up being more empathic feeling
closer to them and having better
attitudes towards them than the people
who just imagine what it would be like
to be older in a second study however we
manipulated the participants self-esteem
and sense of belongingness we made the
elderly a threat and in that study he
didn't matter whether participants
embodied the an avatar that was older or
imagined being older there wasn't there
were there was no positive outcome
so again I just want to highlight how
even the same intervention within
different contexts can have very
different effects so the studies that
I've talked about have a couple of
drawbacks the first one is their sample
size most of these studies have very
small sample sizes they have between 15
to 25 people per condition so this is
just something but when I found out I
thought it was really alarming we're
talking we're creating these experiences
without testing them and then the ones
that have been testing only have 15 to
25 people another reason that another
limitation of these studies is that the
stuff since the sample sizes are small
there's not a lot of demographic
variance most of them are college
students educated people 18 to 24 with
very little demographic variance there's
usually no diversity so what we wanted
to do to address these limitations is
create a series of studies that would
test whether or not virtual reality
experiences could actually improve
empathy specifically towards the
homeless so that was study 1 and we also
wanted to see if VR was better than
other media actually eliciting empathy
so we had four conditions we had
participants experience what it was like
to become homeless in VR we had
participants experience what it was like
to become homeless through a screen sort
of like an online game and then we also
had participants perform the traditional
perspective-taking task that Batson had
proved was effective which means they
just imagine what it was like to become
homeless and then we added a fourth
condition a control condition we just
gave people information about the
current state of the homeless population
in San Francisco and then we also want
to know how long do these effects last
turns out that even in psychology
perspective-taking studies longitudinal
studies have only looked 1 to 2 weeks
afterwards so you know we have we might
see positive effects immediately after
taking the perspective of somebody else
but we don't know if those effects last
past 2 weeks
so what we wanted to do is have we
wanted to know what happened does the
effect stay it said just momentarily
so we asked participants about their
feelings and we measure their behaviors
to four and eight weeks after the
intervention now this study is different
from others in that the sample size is a
lot bigger up to today we have collected
data from over 1300 participants and we
I went to senior citizen center so I
went to middle schools tech events just
trying to get more people to see whether
or not these experiences should be
created for this purpose
we've also collected data in New York in
Hawaii and we're about to start
collecting data in Colorado because I
really think at different areas but we
should try to in create experiences
specifically for specific audiences
specific a couple times but it's
important so these this is a screenshot
of the beginning of the VR experience
participants find themselves in their
apartment looking at an eviction notice
they'll listen on the radio about all
the layoffs that are going on and they
learned that they've lost their job the
landlord knocks you have to pay around I
don't know how many of you are from San
Francisco but I'm assuming it's the same
case in New York rent prices are
ridiculous and the participant basically
has to sell their belongings and are
there to make it and they find out that
it doesn't matter how many items they
sell in our experience they're still
getting evicted participants get to
choose which items they get to sell in
this experience then they're living out
of their car and they learn about city
ordinances for example in San Francisco
you're not allowed to live out of your
car in public places if the cops find
you they can cite you and after several
citations your car gets impounded so
even while you're trying to make it you
may have a job you're still you know
sort of a victim of the system so your
car gets impounded and then you're using
a bus as a shelter in the scene we show
participants what it is like to not have
a sense of security that a shelter
provides so you know they learn that the
few belongings that they do have may get
stolen and they also have no physical
security so people may try to get
close to you anyways that you don't want
them to in this last scene participants
also get to interact with other homeless
individuals in the bus and they get to
learn the ways that they became homeless
these stories we went to homeless
shelters and these are actually real
stories we wanted to make sure that we
had you know like what we were showing
participants was real so these studies
are still ongoing I still don't think
that thirteen hundred participants is
enough for a task this big so we're
still collecting data but this is what
we know so far so whenever it comes to
giving people information versus asking
them to take the perspective of somebody
else whether it's via imagination an
online interface or VR there is this
common misconception that information
doesn't actually lead to behavior change
what we're seeing is that if the
participant receives new information it
can actually lead to pro-social
behaviors something else we're seeing is
that the emergence of conditions that is
the participants who sort of became that
experience would like to become homeless
through an online game kind of interface
and the VR experience actually feel more
connected not only to the homeless but
to their plight and participants in the
VR condition are the ones that are more
interested in actually becoming part of
the solution by writing letters to their
elected officials and signing petitions
so even though these findings are
preliminary and I'm still working on it
cuz I still want to gather more data
what we're seeing is that all of these
interventions are helping people become
more connected to the homeless or at
least are making them aware of all the
of their plight you know of what it is
like to be homeless in America today but
it is the participants in the VR
condition that are actually coming part
of the solution by becoming like
civically engaged
yeah sorry I'm sorry could you repeat
question what is it cost so we were very
lucky that we're funded by the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation the all the
experiences are built in-house we have
programmers from the computer science
department and the symbolic systems
majors that help us build our
experiences we also have staff members I
don't know the actual number of you know
what it is to put all of this together
but we've been very lucky in that we've
had like museums that are really
interested in the technology just you
know give us your space or you know
there's people who are aware of the work
that we're doing and they would like to
see how people in their area react to it
so they've reached out to us so we
haven't had to pay for like space in
order to run this but you know we've
been really lucky that there are certain
like nonprofits I want to work yes okay
so the question was about civic
engagement and how do we kind of
quantify and how do we measure it so the
way that we operationalize that in our
study is we ask participants to write a
letter to an elected official so they
had the option to either write the
letter or not write the letter to sign a
petition for affordable housing and then
we have another behavioral measure which
is we ask participants if they were
interested in donating money to a
homeless shelter so that one we don't
actually consider called civic
engagement just behaviors that actually
result in some sort of political action
yes
so I'm still working on the data
collection so I don't have like the full
findings yet but what we're seeing I
have especially I think it's
particularly interesting and when it
comes to the results of the longitudinal
study is that attitudes seem to be are
improved more so with the VR experience
and they seem to be lasting longer but
again I don't have like the full-on
number I'm lacking yes so do you mind
like just repeating your question to
make sure I answered correctly
oh so that specific slide was talking
about the information condition our
control condition that I mentioned
earlier where we just gave people
statistics about the current state of
the so that wasn't any sort of
perspective-taking
that was just giving people information
and seeing if you could lead to four
social behaviors right so we actually do
measure individual differences so we so
we measure not only the extent to which
people are able to empathize with others
or the extent that they feel that they
can actually change their empathy but we
also measure its attitudes towards the
homeless prior to some of these
experiences so that is not true for all
of the versions that of the study that
we've brand but it's true for some of
the iterations
I'll come back to ya so I'm sorry I did
not I wasn't very clear about this but
the past studies that have been done are
the ones that look at 18 to 24 in the
studies that I'm working on right now
I'm looking at ages between at 55 and
the our oldest participant has been 88
just to sort of be able to answer that
question we felt that the topic and the
experience was not appropriate for
people under 15 therefore you know like
we told IRB no one under 15 is going to
participate on this so I don't I'm not
sure I have any insight on what it would
be like to have these sort of
experiences for younger audiences I do
have a colleague Jackie Bailey Jay akki
Bailey and she's working on the studying
the effects of virtual reality
experiences on younger kids some of her
studies have looked at the effect of
interacting with avatars and virtual
reality on kids 4 to 6 so some of her
work may be able to help us understand
that area but as of now I haven't
focused on it but the young younger
generations
okay so the question is about the
intervention itself like what did
participants do like how was the
interactivity of the experience so we
wanted
so whenever Batson asked participants to
imagine what it was like to become a
member of a stigmatized group we have
you get very many different I mean
everybody's and my generation is
different so you got very many people
imagining very many different things
would it be are we standardized the
narrative but we've been with a
narrative being started in your
apartment then you're in a button in the
car and then you're in a bus but within
each scene we gave we had an interactive
aspect for it so in the apartment scene
they get to choose which items in the
room they get to sell in the car scene
they have to find their toothbrush so
it's sort of like a mini scavenger hunt
in your card who's trying to brush your
teeth to show you know how doing
something as mundane as brushing your
teeth when you're living out of your car
can be really hard and then in the last
part of the experience you know they
they got to interact with other avatars
with other homeless people yeah so we
wanted to make sure that the experience
that we created was speaking truth about
what it was like to become homeless so
we worked with homeless shelters and we
talked to you people who run them and we
talked to homeless people just you know
and then we learned from their
experiences about the ordinances which I
think it's something like really
important whenever you're trying to
create any sort of virtual reality
experience specifically designed to
promote empathy towards a particular
group I think it's really important to
go to that group and get their
experiences so that you know other
people can understand them better
it's
I haven't done that yet I'm saving that
I'm sorry there's just we're getting so
much data because we're also getting
like tracking data and we have
self-report data and we have behavioural
data I just it's a great question and I
do plan on answering it I just don't
first I know we haven't looked at their
experiences to create empathy for
Indians although it's a topic that
thinking immigrant myself I'm very
interested in so maybe in a couple years
when I'm done answering yes I'm writing
it right now so the publication process
takes a couple of months it has to be
peer reviewed but hopefully very soon
yeah I'm sorry could you could you start
over yeah so one of the questions that
we asked participants after they've gone
through any of the four conditions that
we have is something called the
dehumanization scale so it literally
asks people to what extent do you see
this other member but it could be you
know the homeless or it could be anybody
else to what extent do you actually feel
like there is a vault this new and it's
a it's a numeric scale from zero to a
hundred and then unfortunately we get
variants along that spectrum but what
we're seeing is that a lot of people are
actually heard some more positive and of
it no we're no this is self-report doing
electromagnetic imaging with the VR is
actually really hard because the cool
thing is about VR is that you get to
move but with usually those kind of
brain images
devices it kind of gets lost I think
done or one more done I'm done I'm sorry
