Abstract
Perspective-taking is essential for improving intergroup relations. However, it is difficult to implement, especially in violent conflicts. Given that immersive virtual reality (VR) can simulate various points of view (POV), we examined whether it can lead to beneficial outcomes by promoting outgroup perspective-taking, even in armed conflicts. In two studies, Jewish-Israelis watched a 360° VR scene depicting an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation from different POVs–outgroup’s, ingroup’s while imagining outgroup perspective or ingroup’s without imagined perspective-taking. Participants immersed in the outgroup’s POV, but not those who imagined the outgroup’s perspective, perceived the Palestinians more positively than those immersed in the ingroup’s POV. Moreover, participants in the outgroup’s POV perceived the Palestinian population in general more favorably and judged a real-life ingroup transgression more strictly than those in the ingroup’s POV, even five months after VR intervention. Results suggest that VR can promote conflict resolution by enabling effective perspective-taking.
Highlights
Intergroup conflicts are one of the major problems facing human society
We examined whether immersion in the enemy’s point of view through virtual reality (VR) would enable effective perspective-taking that leads to more positive emotions and attitudes towards the adversary, and reduces intergroup tensions
Having established that compared with the control condition, immersive perspective-taking was superior to the traditional perspectivetaking in most of the outcome variables, we focused on the comparison between immersive perspective-taking and the control condition
Summary
Intergroup conflicts are one of the major problems facing human society. From the beginning of 21st century, armed intergroup conflicts cost the lives of more than 1 million people worldwide [1], and during 2017 nearly 70 million men, women and children were uprooted from their homes as a result of wars, violence and persecution [2]. Many violent conflicts are rooted in political, racial, and religious dissensions [3], and are difficult to overcome because of multiple psychological barriers [4, 5]. Immersive virtual environments enhance peace promoting attitudes and emotions in violent intergroup conflicts
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