Virtual body ownership and its consequences for implicit racial bias are dependent on social context

Abstract

When people hold implicit biases against a group they typically engage in discriminatory behaviour against group members. In the context of the implicit racial bias of ‘White' against ‘Black' people, it has been shown several times that implicit bias is reduced after a short exposure of embodiment in a dark-skinned body in virtual reality. Embodiment usually leads to the illusion of ownership over the virtual body, irrespective of its skin colour. Previous studies have been carried out in virtual scenarios that are affectively neutral or positive. Here, we show that when the scenario is affectively negative the illusion of body ownership of White participants over a White body is lessened, and implicit bias is higher for White participants in a Black virtual body. The study was carried out with 92 White female participants, in a between-groups design with two factors: BodyType (their virtual body was White or Black) and a surrounding Crowd was Negative, Neutral or Positive towards the participant. We argue that negative affect prevents the formation of new positive associations with Black and distress leads to disownership of the virtual body. Although virtual reality is often thought of as an ‘empathy machine' our results suggest caution, that this may not be universally the case.

A Virtual Reality Embodiment Technique to Enhance Helping Behavior of Police Toward a Victim of Police Racial Aggression

“…Further work has shown that the reduction in implicit racial bias lasts for at least one week after the VR exposure (Banakou, Hanumanthu, & Slater, 2016). Banakou et al (2020) has replicated these results when the surrounding situation is affectively neutral or positive and also confirmed the finding of Groom et al that implicit racial bias of White against Black increases when the embodiment takes place in a situation that generates negative affect. All of the above studies have used the racial IAT as a measure of implicit bias.…”

“…Apart from the human misery this causes, including long-term psychological trauma for survivors and their families, this is perceived as an assault on the entire community, which ultimately can lead to more violence. Recent resultsfor example, (Banakou et al, 2020) -that exploit the power of Virtual Reality to give people experiences of being another person suggest that it may be possible to diminish implicit racial bias. This paper describes an experimental study that utilizes such findings in the context of police racial bias.…”

How Multi-Sensory Animal Embodiment in Virtual Reality Influences Environmental Threat Processing and Conservation Behaviors

“…Despite growing interest in BT and its effects, the requirements for establishing BT with non-human bodies remain ambiguous. For one, the majority of studies testing the effects of embodiment have done so using humanoid avatars 46,51,70,71 . Second, while the style (or realism) of one's virtual body does not necessarily detract from BT 72 , morphological similarity to one's body can in uence on BT 72,73 .…”

A Postphenomenological Framework for Studying User Experience of Immersive Virtual Reality

“…Although the content of the experience is virtual, the experience is "real as an experience" (Slater et al, 2020, p. 5, emphasis in original), and the emotional and cognitive after-effects, although usually beneficial, can also be harmful (Slater et al, 2020). For instance, while VR interventions may reduce implicit racial bias (Banakou et al, 2016), they may also increase it in negative contexts (Groom et al, 2009;Banakou et al, 2020), suggesting potentially non-beneficent results when using VR as an "empathy machine." Similar warnings have been issued by Sri Kalyanaraman et al (2010) who immersed participants in a simulation of the effects of schizophrenia.…”