This document discusses how virtual reality can be used as a tool to facilitate empathy. It begins by defining empathy and exploring its emergence in human development. It then outlines three areas of "empathic computing": recognition of emotions, understanding others' experiences through VR, and sharing experiences with others using augmented reality. Several VR projects are described that aim to help users understand and share the experiences of others to develop empathy, such as experiencing life as a refugee or person with a disability. The document concludes by discussing how VR can be used to reduce cognitive biases through embodied experiences and visual remapping of touch between users.
3. Empathy as Mindreading 3
Mutual Wave Machine with Suzanne Dikker (left) and Marina Abramovich (right)
4. The Emergence of Empathy
One View: Empathy is tied to
self-emergence, thus
infants/children do not develop
empathy or interpersonal
understanding until after they
reach the “mirror stage” of
self-recognition
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7. Empathic Computing (Billinghurst,
2016)
1. Recognition – systems that can
recognize your feelings and emotions
(sensors)
2. Understanding – systems that help you
better understand the experience of others
(VR)
3. Sharing – systems that help you better
share the experience of others (AR)
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8. 1. Recognition
Started by Roz Picard at MIT Media Lab
Systems that recognize emotion through:
Facial Expression
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
Physiological responses
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10. Empathy as Understanding
“Virtual reality offers a whole new
medium to tell stories that really
connect people and create an empathic
connection.”
- Nonny de la Peña
http://www.emblematicgroup.com
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14. New Eyes for Students (Makropol)
Project designed to teach the UN Development Initiatives
to Danish grade school children, especially cultural
diversity, global sustainability issues, and perspective
taking
Transports student to Africa, where a little girl guides
audience on a tour through her world and talks about her
life
Unique design that allows for a “you” relation where
audience feels present and like the little girl is talking to
them.
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16. Empathy as Sharing
Can we develop experiences that
allow us to share what we are
seeing, hearing, and feeling with
someone else?
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17. The Amphibian SCUBA Diving
Simulator (Dhruv Jain, MIT Media Lab)
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Goal: Help people
understand the liberating
effects of disabilities, which
Jain (who is deaf) likens to
the experience of being
underwater.
19. Childhood (Siggraph 2015)
Kenji Suzuki, Univesity of Tsukuba
What does it feel like to be a child?
VR display + moved cameras + hand restrictors
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21. Examples of Avatar Effects
Embodying a body of a different race reduces implicit racial biases
(Groom, Bailenson, and Nass, 2009)
Embodying a tall avatar increases self-confidence in negotiation tasks
(Yee and Bailenson, 2007)
Embodying an attractive avatar increases self-disclosure
(Yee and Bailenson, 2007)
Embodying a stressful posture in a virtual body can increase stress
even though physical body is not in that posture/position
(Bergström, Kilteni, and Slater, 2013)
Embodying a child avatar body causes subjects causes an
overestimation in object sizes
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24. THE MACHINE TO BE ANOTHER:
An Empathy Machine?
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“Empathy is created the moment we try to put ourselves in
another person’s shoes.” – Aspen Baker, TED Radio Hour
“The machine to be another is designed to stimulate
empathy through embodied interaction between
individuals.” (Bertrand et al., 2014)
To what extent can we experience and understand what it is like
to be someone else?
25. Machine to Be Another: Live Stream
Perspective Sharing + Swapping
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32. The Effect: After Wearing the Headset
“Now when we look into another person's eyes,
what we see is another person looking back at us.
Now we see another being who is just like us,
another entity trapped inside the illusion of all
these packages of individual differences -- body,
personality, etc.
– Carl Rogers
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43. Introducing Ex Nihilo
In The Republic, Plato asks, "Will we
say, of a painter, that he makes
something?" and answers, "Certainly
not, he merely imitates."
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45. Subject Quote
“It almost feels like collectively
discovering something that was in her
head all along. The experience allowed
this completely different way of
connecting to someone that doesn’t rely
on facial expressions or anything.”
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55. Simulating Color-Sound Synaesthesia
“Not many people go for a walk in the
supermarket for fun, but I do. I have an electronic
eye that converts light into sound to enable me to
“hear” colour – so the cleaning product aisle is
very exciting. The rows of rainbow-coloured
bottles sound like a symphony to me.”
-Neil Harbisson
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58. Discussion Question
What is the value of having these
types of experiences that allow us to
understand the world as filtered
through the perception of another?
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65. Visual Remapping of Touch
Through the visual remapping of
touch, synchronous touch stimuli
applied to one’s own face and the
face of an outgroup member results
in a decrease in implicit biases.
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68. The Next Challenge
“We’re starting to move out of the ‘wow’
phase of this new technology and into
‘what does this mean for humanity?’” –
Chris Milk
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