Can Virtual Reality Foster Global Citizenship?
VR is lauded for fostering empathy, but research is mixed on the lasting effects
A New Jersey middle schooler can now wander through the scene of a Syrian refugee camp that seems as real as her daily walk to the bus stop. VR gear is enabling students in American classrooms to engage with peers across the globe. In consequence, humanitarian groups are increasingly investing in VR to foster global citizenship.
The UN’s Alliance of Civilizations has poured resources into partnerships with VR pioneers including Oculus and Google. But efforts to use VR as a transformative tool still face the same challenges as traditional media: how to translate a VR user’s experience — no matter how salient — into real world action.
New York- and Amman-based nonprofit Global Nomads Group is one organization confronting the challenge of turning empathy into action. Grace Lau, the group’s VR director, calls resources developed by their Virtual Reality Lab a “global citizenship toolkit.” One of these toolkits helps educators incorporate VR into classrooms, along with free curriculum guides and lesson plans to accompany 360 video documentaries aimed at middle school and high school students.
VR is such a new global citizenship tool — Global Nomads just introduced their program to students last year — that it’s too soon to measure its success. But BeAnotherLab, an international collective of creative researchers, has been innovating as well.
BeAnotherLab investigator Daanish Masood’s enthusiasm for the marriage of storytelling and scientific research is contagious. “When VR gives someone the first-person perspective of inhabiting someone else’s body, what happens?” he asks. “Are we seeing real behavioral shifts? Do they last? How is this scaled?”
Stanford’s studies have yet to prove any enduring changes in behavior due to VR. Despite promising differences between responses to mental stimulation versus immersive VR, prospects for lasting empathic transformation seem limited.
As a UN Political Affairs Officer and Alliance of Civilizations member, Masood is working on negotiations to bring an end to armed conflicts, a role that he brings to BeAnotherLab’s studies. “How people relate to each other, how VR can challenge our notions of borders, is what I’m most interested in,” he says.
But when asked about the technology’s potential to bring social change, even Masood has his doubts. “I’m very skeptical of notions of empathy in VR,” he explains. “A VR headset can be a waystation, but the system that’s in place is difficult to overcome.” In other words, an Oculus Rift HMD can virtually transport us to the harrowing scene of a natural disaster, but it probably won’t deter us from going to a cocktail party afterwards. VR can simulate the Other’s lived experience for us, but that’s not the same thing as changing our habits.
Case studies and lab experiments have made some gains in studying how VR-simulated body visualization could potentially change our behavior. Dubbed “empathy at scale” by researchers, this is the central goal of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The lab has been praised for experiments that have used VR to help participants reduce prejudice and fight xenophobia.
However, data gathered by the Stanford lab’s various studies have yet to prove any enduring changes in behavior due to VR. In fact, results of an experiment on how a VR experience could reduce ageism among participants, in which participants wore Oculus Rift DK2 head-mounted displays that made them see themselves as an elderly avatar, highlighted the limits of VR’s effects on our empathy. Despite promising differences between responses to mental stimulation versus immersive VR, prospects for lasting empathic transformation seem limited.
If the goal of cultivating global citizenship is to change humanity, to inspire us to empathize with each other enough to welcome refugees and reject bias, the role of VR is still to be seen. Daanish Masood recalled a popular trope about The Velvet Underground, whose iconic first album only sold 30,000 copies during its first five years — but they say that everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band. For those who want to see moments of VR-induced empathy turn students into diplomats, that may be the best model they can hope for.
