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.

1. Virtual Reality as a Tool to
Fascilitate Empath
Lynda Joy Gerry
29th of June 2016

2. What do we mean by empathy? 2

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
4

5. Early Infant Interpersonal Interactivity 5

6. Infant Sensitivity to Interpersonal
Timing (Trevarthin and Murray, 1985)
6

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)
7

8. 1. Recognition
 Started by Roz Picard at MIT Media Lab
 Systems that recognize emotion through:
Facial Expression
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
Physiological responses
8

9. Empathy as Recognition 9

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
10

11. Project Syria (de la Peña, 2015) 11

12. Clouds Over Sidra (Chris Milk) 12

13. 13

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.
14

15. The Potential: What Happens When
People Take Off the VR Headset
15

16. Empathy as Sharing
Can we develop experiences that
allow us to share what we are
seeing, hearing, and feeling with
someone else?
16

17. The Amphibian SCUBA Diving
Simulator (Dhruv Jain, MIT Media Lab)
17
Goal: Help people
understand the liberating
effects of disabilities, which
Jain (who is deaf) likens to
the experience of being
underwater.

18. Virtual Embodiment,
Bodily Illusions, and
Avatar Effects
18

19. Childhood (Siggraph 2015)
 Kenji Suzuki, Univesity of Tsukuba
 What does it feel like to be a child?
 VR display + moved cameras + hand restrictors
19

20. 20Virtual Embodiment
Banakou, Groten, Slater, 2013

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
21

22. The Machine to Be
Another: Body Sharing
Illusions
22

23. First Person 23

24. THE MACHINE TO BE ANOTHER:
An Empathy Machine?
24
“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
25

26. Machine to Be Another: Perspective
Sharing
26

27. What this Looks like to Performer and
User in The Machine
27

28. Machine to Be Another: Perspective Sharing
+ Seeing Oneself from Other’s POV
28

29. What this Looks Like in the Machine 29

30. Machine to Be Another: Full Body
Swap
30

31. What Happens When People Take off
the Headset?
31

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
32

33. The Machine to Be Another
(MIT Media Lab)
33

34. Painter Project and
Cognitive Perspective
Sharing
34

35. Painter Project: Stereo Footage with
Binaural Audio
35

36. Ex Nihilo: Exploring the Stimulation of Creativity and
Empathy through Embodied Experiences in Virtual
Reality
36

37. Gallagher et al. (2015)
Neurophenomenology of Awe and
Wonder
37

38. Video of Experimental Task 38

39. 39

40. 40

41. 41

42. 42

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."
43

44. “Imitated” Paintings by Subjects 44

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.”
45

46. Empathy as Understanding
the World as Perceived or
Experienced By or For
Someone Else
46

47. Notes on Blindness
47

48. 48

49. Achromatopsia & Color-Sound
Synesthesia
49

50. Seeing Through Touch:
The World of Visually
Impaired Children
50

51. 51

52. 52

53. 53

54. 54

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
55

56. Autumn (Tusmørke) 56

57. Autism: Too Much Information 57

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?
58

59. Does This Promote
Helping Behavior?
59

60. Seeing the World as Someone Who is
Colorblind (Promoting Helping Behavior)
60
Ahn et al., 2015

61. Be My Eyes
61

62. 62

63. VR TO REDUCE
COGNITIVE BIASES
63

64. Somatosensory Resonance
Definition: We understand other’s
physical and mental states by
remapping other’s body states onto
our own sensorimotor system
64

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.
65

66. Visual Remapping of Touch 66
Fini et al., 2013

67. Reducing Implicit Racial Bias:
The Enfacement Illusion
67
Ahn et al., 2015

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
68

69. Final Discussion Question
How can virtual reality
help us understand one
another?
69

70. Thanks for your Attention!
lynda@whatisexperience.com