This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.
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Authors: Iloradanon H. Efimoff, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Toronto Metropolitan University; and Katherine B. Starzyk, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba
Virtual reality is a rapidly developing technology. As the technology expands, becoming more portable and affordable, the potential uses have expanded as well.
One virtual reality creator calls virtual reality the 鈥渦ltimate empathy machine.鈥� Promising research shows that virtual reality can improve empathy toward groups such as people experiencing schizophrenia, children who are refugees and people who are unhoused.
Working with an interdisciplinary research team, we put this statement to the test within the context of residential schools in Canada.
Effective teaching about residential schools
Residential schools were state-funded, church-run institutions that amounted to genocide. Teachers and other adults at these schools abused the children physically, emotionally and sexually.
Knowledge of residential schools in Canada is relatively high. Recent national polls show that in 2022, 65 per cent of non-Indigenous respondents had read or heard about residential schools. This number increased to 90 per cent in 2023. This type of awareness, however, does not necessarily reflect a deep knowledge of residential schools.
Given the apparent rise in residential school denialism and decreasing support for reconciliation initiatives, it is vital to find effective ways to teach about residential schools.
Work with Survivors on virtual project
Members of our interdisciplinary research team created a virtual rendering of Fort Alexander Residential School, working closely with a group of Survivors from that school. The school operated from 1905-1970 in Manitoba, near Winnipeg, and was run by the Roman Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
The virtual rendering took years to develop, with critical relationships forming along the way. Members of this same team, and some new members, then tested the effects of the school.
Overall, researchers with a range of approaches participated, including those who work in the areas of psychology, sociology, and computer science, or who are concerned with representation of war and genocide.
One concern of those involved in the project was how participants would engage in the virtual school. In particular, we didn鈥檛 want the virtual school to be 鈥済amified鈥� (used like a video game). To this end, the virtual reality school is 鈥渙n-the-tracks,鈥� meaning viewers move through the school on a set path.
This set path included visiting a classroom, a dormitory and a cellar, among other spaces that the Survivors described. The school was designed such that the viewers would feel physically small in the space 鈥� as if they were the size of a child. While moving through the various rooms in the school, viewers listened to recordings of Survivors鈥� stories of their experiences at the school.
Would VR experience improve empathy?
To test if a virtual reality residential school could improve empathy toward Indigenous people, we ran an experiment, as researchers do when they want to compare the impact of different experiences.
All experiments include a group of people who receive some sort of intervention, such as our virtual reality school. In the simplest approach, researchers can compare the effects of the intervention group to an 鈥渆mpty control group,鈥� which includes people who receive no intervention and often just respond to questions assessing key outcomes. Through comparisons like this, researchers can understand the effect of the intervention compared to doing nothing.
We used a slightly more rigorous design by adding a third group who simply read the transcripts of the narration that accompanied the virtual school. This allowed us to test if the virtual reality school outperformed the transcripts, which were a different method of learning about residential schools.
Powerful Survivor stories
We tested how the virtual school, transcript and control groups affected four outcomes: empathy, warmth and political solidarity toward Indigenous people as well as perceptions that past events still cause suffering today 鈥� what we and often legal scholars call 鈥減rivity.鈥� We looked at the effects right after the experiment and then again weeks later.
As we thought, compared to the control group, people who received either the transcript or virtual reality intervention responded more favourably toward Indigenous people; they reported more empathy, warmth, political solidarity and privity.
But a surprising thing happened too: People in the transcript and virtual reality groups responded in the same way. Though we cannot be sure why, we suspect these two groups did not differ because the Survivors鈥� stories are powerful.
Finally, over time, the differences among groups disappeared. The changes caused by reading a transcript or experiencing the virtual world went away.
Need for ongoing education
Our findings imply that a meaningful story does not require sophisticated technology like virtual reality to have impact. In cases where the story is captivating, the technology might not be necessary to engage people.
Though trendy, virtual reality equipment is also more expensive and not as portable as written work. Of course, virtual reality might be just the right fit for audiences that would rather not or can鈥檛 read. It might also be a novel hook to get someone to engage with a topic they may otherwise avoid.
Perhaps more clearly, our disappointing finding that the interventions did not last over time highlights the need for ongoing education about residential schools. A single learning opportunity is unlikely to cause long-lasting change in feelings and attitudes toward Indigenous people. There is more work to do.
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Katherine B. Starzyk holds funding from the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada as well as Canadian Heritage / Patrimoine canadien. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Manitoba.
Iloradanon H. Efimoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/can-a-virtual-reality-residential-school-developed-with-survivors-improve-empathy-toward-indigenous-people-249996
Iloradanon H. Efimoff, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Toronto Metropolitan University; and Katherine B. Starzyk, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, The Conversation
