Reducing dehumanisation through virtual reality: prospects and pitfalls
Harry Farmer · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · 2023
This paper presents evidence that Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to reduce dehumanisation via a range of different routes, notably the experience of being present in a situation with outgroup members, experiencing virtual contact and interaction with the outgroup and taking on the perspective or even body of an outgroup member. In addition, it hightlights key questions that require future research, including the strength of empirical evidence that VR can indeed reduce dehumanisation, the mechanisms by which such a process occurs and the ethical issues in treating VR as an 'ultimate empathy machine'.