H2020Индивидуална стипендия2019–2021

contactVIRT · Intergroup Contact in Virtual Reality: Comparative Effects of Two Contact Strategies on Reducing Prejudice and Increasing Trust Between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2019-09-01 → 2021-12-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 224 934 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Виртуалната реалност се тества като средство за намаляване на предразсъдъците между католици и протестанти в Северна Ирландия чрез взаимодействие с аватари. Това е важно, защото физическото разделение в региона затруднява реалните контакти и засилва взаимното недоверие.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Intergroup Contact in Virtual Reality: Comparative Effects of Two Contact Strategies on Reducing Prejudice and Increasing Trust Between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland

Decades of research have corroborated the positive consequences of intergroup contact in different settings and with diverse groups (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). However, contact is less likely to occur in post-conflict contexts such as Northern Ireland, in which almost 94% of schools are divided along religious lines and by the so-called “Peace lines” consisting of walls, gates, and iron fences separating Catholic and Protestant districts. In other words, people grow up with relatively scarce contact with members of the other community. This lack of contact cultivates stereotypes, distrust, and negative attitudes from an early age that may prove resistant to change. Faced with this scenario, alternative contact strategies such as virtual reality (VR) have been considered but less fully explored for intergroup contact. Current VR technology integrates multimedia systems that allow users to experience a full 3D interaction and communicate with others through avatars. The degree of users’ self-involvement with avatars makes VR more relevant for contact because it brings into play their personal and social identities, and it affects their behaviour, for example, by promoting empathy and prosocial behaviours towards outgroups (Behm-Morawitz, Pennell & Speno, 2015). As VR technology has become more economically and ergonomically accessible over the last years, with users even accessing VR through their smartphones, it is imperative to analyse the extent to which contact in VR favours intergroup relationships. The primary objective of this proposal is to test the effectiveness of VR-contact on reducing prejudice and promoting trust and prosocial behaviours between Catholics and Protestants in the post-conflict context of Northern Ireland. Particularly we seek to: 1) Compare the relative strengths of gratitude induction and recategorisation contact strategies in successfully diminishing prejudice and increasing trust towards the outgroup, 2) Evaluate underlying mechanisms of avatar communication (i.e., avatar identification, embodiment) in terms of promoting contact effects, 3) Compare the relative effect of including a gaze feature in avatars as a mean for conveying realism to interactions to a condition in which this feature is not available. Gazing avatars are often evaluated as more “realistic” and “attractive”, and 4) Identify the communication strategies used by participants to approach or detach from other participants based on their primary social identities and on the experimental salient identities.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Intergroup contact is widely recognised among social scientists as a means to overcome prejudice between social groups. However, contact is less likely to occur in highly segregated contexts such as the post-conflict society of Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants grow with relatively scarce contact with members outside their own group. Faced with this scenario, scholars have examined computer-mediated contact with relatively successful outcomes. Although virtual reality (VR) technologies have been less fully explored in this respect, it offers great potential for contact by way of avatar communication in a safe environment. The scarce literature in this area has associated VR interactions with empathy and trust towards outgroups. These effects derive mainly from two strategies: perspective taking (e.g., making users to adopt an outgroup avatar), and recategorisation (e.g., inducing an inclusive-superordinate identity among ingroup/outgroup members). Conversely, the mechanisms by which VR-contact may be effective are less clear as other similar studies have obtained mixed results. A potential confusion in the effects produced by avatar customization (similarity identification, embodiment), and the relevance of the primed superordinate identity (transient or lasting) for group members, seem to affect contact outcomes. This proposal has a primary objective of testing the effectiveness of VR-contact in reducing prejudice and promoting trust between members of the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. Specifically, this research will compare the relative strengths of perspective taking versus recategorisation, evaluate the mechanisms of avatar customization, and advance a research framework of contact in VR environments for successful contact effects. Hence, this research will extend the field by producing theoretical advances in an innovative area which combines communication technologies and intergroup contact.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST · BELFASTКоординаторОбединеното кралство