Offenders become the victim in virtual reality: impact of changing perspective in domestic violence

S Seinfeld,M V Sanchez-Vives,G Iruretagoyena,L E Zapata,R Hortensius,M Slater,J Arroyo-Palacios,B De Gelder,D Borland

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-19987-7

Abstract

The role of empathy and perspective-taking in preventing aggressive behaviors has been highlighted in several theoretical models. In this study, we used immersive virtual reality to induce a full body ownership illusion that allows offenders to be in the body of a victim of domestic abuse. A group of male domestic violence offenders and a control group without a history of violence experienced a virtual scene of abuse in first-person perspective. During the virtual encounter, the participants’ real bodies were replaced with a life-sized virtual female body that moved synchronously with their own real movements. Participants' emotion recognition skills were assessed before and after the virtual experience. Our results revealed that offenders have a significantly lower ability to recognize fear in female faces compared to controls, with a bias towards classifying fearful faces as happy. After being embodied in a female victim, offenders improved their ability to recognize fearful female faces and reduced their bias towards recognizing fearful faces as happy. For the first time, we demonstrate that changing the perspective of an aggressive population through immersive virtual reality can modify socio-perceptual processes such as emotion recognition, thought to underlie this specific form of aggressive behaviors.

Highlights

Theoretical models of aggression have suggested that the perpetration of violent acts against others is linked to a lack of empathy or to a deficit in the ability of offenders to put themselves in the perspective of their victims[1]
The main goal of this study was to investigate the impact of perspective taking during violent behavior and the empathy that it engenders on emotion recognition in participants including domestic offenders and controls
A virtual reality (VR) paradigm for embodiment of males in a female virtual body was carried out (Fig. 1a–c)[30,31] for participants to experience the virtual scene as if they were the target of domestic violence

Summary

Introduction

Theoretical models of aggression have suggested that the perpetration of violent acts against others is linked to a lack of empathy or to a deficit in the ability of offenders to put themselves in the perspective of their victims[1]. Despite the fact that these virtual bodies may look drastically different to the participants’ own bodies in terms of size, height, skin tone, or age, individuals can still experience a strong subjective feeling of ownership[8,9] Such embodiment illusions can influence social cognition by altering participants’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors[10,11,12,13]. We have studied the impact of perspective taking (through virtual embodiment) and empathy on emotion recognition in participants including domestic violence offenders and controls To this end, male participants entered a virtual environment where their body was substituted by that of a virtual female and they went through a process of “embodiment” (Fig. 1a–c). We assessed emotion recognition skills before and after the VR experience, the degree of body ownership illusion[12], and the subjective opinion regarding the virtual reality experience

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion