
Ask HN: Will VR experiences promote empathy? - cyrusradfar
I was watching this #prideforeveryone video out of Google (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=6oDLqmM2BPw) and was taken aback by how the depth of the experience pulled me in.<p>I am curious if the community knows of or is actively working on VR experiences that promote empathy?
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curuinor
Social 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.

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Feneric
I 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.

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adiian
My 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.

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wturner
I 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

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missn
BeAnotherLab 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).

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thenomad
[https://vhil.stanford.edu/news/](https://vhil.stanford.edu/news/) has some
interesting resources on this.

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aaron695
No 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.

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TheGreatestEver
But why would a VR experience promote empathy? I can't find any research on
that...

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cyrusradfar
Good point. Here's a good google scholar search that can get you started
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=entertainment+education...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=entertainment+education+empathy&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1)

My assumption is VR has a comparable or greater impact to conventional video
formats.

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LifeQuestioner
Yes.

[http://www.dart.ed.ac.uk/simulate-autism/](http://www.dart.ed.ac.uk/simulate-
autism/)

