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Ask HN: Will VR experiences promote empathy?
I was watching this #prideforeveryone video out of Google (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oDLqmM2BPw) and was taken aback by how the depth of the experience pulled me in.
I am curious if the community knows of or is actively working on VR experiences that promote empathy?
- TheGreatestEver 10y agoBut why would a VR experience promote empathy? I can't find any research on that...
- cyrusradfar 10y agoGood point. Here's a good google scholar search that can get you started https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=entertainment+education+empathy&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=entertainment+education... My assumption is VR has a comparable or greater impact to conventional video formats.
- missn 10y agoBeAnotherLab is one that tries to do that: http://www.themachinetobeanother.org http://www.themachinetobeanother.org They let you experience what it's like to be another person via a custom-built video rig (i.e. you get to 'see' the world as another person).
- curuinor 10y agoSocial presence is your research keyword. There's a long history of research done which can be pretty much summed up with Cliff Nass's contention that people confuse humans with computers a lot, and transactional status ends up being important because of this. I think that in practice, VR will not promote empathy for the same reason that social networks have not: because status aggrandizing products will be too popular. You already see this in horror games, where they become literally too scary for VR because the lowering of status in transaction feels too real. Look up the Proteus effect: that will lead to some detrimental things whenever it gets implemented in the social applications that people will come up with. So there will come new Instagrams, and they will be more terrible than the old social networks.
- Feneric 10y agoI don't think the VR versions of social networks will help promote empathy, but the VR versions of movies can do so in the same way that ordinary movies can, but perhaps even more effectively as they give the viewer presence, too.
- aaron695 10y agoNo it won't, why would it? For some reason there's a meme that it will but all the reasons I've seen why VR would also apply to the internet and it doesn't seem to have. Reality is we don't want more empathy anyway. It's a cancer that stops many good things happening.
- adiian 10y agoMy intuition would be tempted to say no. But I would look at similar breakthroughs in our history. I think Photography and Television and arguably Internet made us more emphatic and open-minded to accept differences, especially when the root cause was ignorance. VR could follow the trend if we can be emerged in places and circumstances we can not physically be in, or if we can see the world through other person eyes.
- wturner 10y agoI have trouble attaching the idea of "Empathy promotion" to any kind of technology. Example: "Guns promote empathy because they allow us to kill edible things and protect our families". I think people promote empathy en-mass through our "cultural" assumptions first, "technological empathy" is a secondary extension of that ... imho
- LifeQuestioner 10y agoYes. http://www.dart.ed.ac.uk/simulate-autism/ http://www.dart.ed.ac.uk/simulate-autism/
- thenomad 10y agohttps://vhil.stanford.edu/news/ https://vhil.stanford.edu/news/ has some interesting resources on this.