PowerPoint Presentation

Virtual Reality as a Tool to Fascilitate EmpathLynda Joy Gerry29th of June 2016

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What do we mean by empathy?2

Empathy as Mindreading3

Mutual Wave Machine with Suzanne Dikker (left) and Marina Abramovich (right)

The Emergence of EmpathyOne 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-recognition4

Early Infant Interpersonal Interactivity5

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

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

1. RecognitionStarted by Roz Picard at MIT Media LabSystems that recognize emotion through:Facial ExpressionGalvanic Skin Response (GSR)Physiological responses

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Empathy as Recognition9

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 Peahttp://www.emblematicgroup.com10

Project Syria (de la Pea, 2015)11

Clouds Over Sidra (Chris Milk)12

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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

The Potential: What Happens When People Take Off the VR Headset15

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

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.

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Virtual Embodiment, Bodily Illusions, and Avatar Effects18

Childhood (Siggraph 2015)Kenji Suzuki, Univesity of TsukubaWhat does it feel like to be a child?VR display + moved cameras + hand restrictors19

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Virtual EmbodimentBanakou, Groten, Slater, 2013

Examples of Avatar EffectsEmbodying 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(Bergstrm, Kilteni, and Slater, 2013)Embodying a child avatar body causes subjects causes an overestimation in object sizes21

The Machine to Be Another: Body Sharing Illusions22

First Person23

THE MACHINE TO BE ANOTHER:An Empathy Machine?24Empathy is created the moment we try to put ourselves in another persons 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?

Machine to Be Another: Live Stream Perspective Sharing + Swapping25

Machine to Be Another: Perspective Sharing26

What this Looks like to Performer and User in The Machine27

Machine to Be Another: Perspective Sharing + Seeing Oneself from Others POV28

What this Looks Like in the Machine29

Machine to Be Another: Full Body Swap30

What Happens When People Take off the Headset?31

The Effect: After Wearing the HeadsetNow 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 Rogers32

The Machine to Be Another (MIT Media Lab)33

Painter Project and Cognitive Perspective Sharing34

Painter Project: Stereo Footage with Binaural Audio35

Ex Nihilo: Exploring the Stimulation of Creativity and Empathy through Embodied Experiences in Virtual Reality36

Gallagher et al. (2015) Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder37

Video of Experimental Task38

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Introducing Ex NihiloIn The Republic, Plato asks, "Will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?" and answers, "Certainly not, he merely imitates."43

Imitated Paintings by Subjects44

Subject QuoteIt 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 doesnt rely on facial expressions or anything.45

Empathy as Understanding the World as Perceived or Experienced By or For Someone Else46

Notes on Blindness47

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Achromatopsia & Color-Sound Synesthesia49

Seeing Through Touch: The World of Visually Impaired Children50

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Simulating Color-Sound SynaesthesiaNot 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 Harbisson55

Autumn (Tusmrke)56

Autism: Too Much Information57

Discussion QuestionWhat is the value of having these types of experiences that allow us to understand the world as filtered through the perception of another?58

Does This Promote Helping Behavior?59

Seeing the World as Someone Who is Colorblind (Promoting Helping Behavior)60

Ahn et al., 2015

Be My Eyes61

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VR TO REDUCE COGNITIVE BIASES63

Somatosensory ResonanceDefinition: We understand others physical and mental states by remapping others body states onto our own sensorimotor system

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Visual Remapping of Touch Through the visual remapping of touch, synchronous touch stimuli applied to ones own face and the face of an outgroup member results in a decrease in implicit biases.

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Visual Remapping of Touch66

Fini et al., 2013

Reducing Implicit Racial Bias: The Enfacement Illusion67

Ahn et al., 2015

The Next ChallengeWere starting to move out of the wow phase of this new technology and into what does this mean for humanity? Chris Milk68

Final Discussion QuestionHow can virtual reality help us understand one another?69

Thanks for your Attention!lynda@whatisexperience.com