Three ways VR can change the world
‘Is this VR headset good?’
When we ask questions like this, we’re usually looking for a practical answer. What are its technical specifications? How accurate is its tracking? However as VR takes an increasingly critical role in our lives and jobs, we have a responsibility to look deeper: to match technological transformation with human insight. We need to consider VR’s ethical impact on users and on the world. Initiatives like ‘VR For Good’ and ‘VR for Impact’ are based on the idea that virtual reality has the power to make profoundly positive change for people, communities and society. Covering subjects such as the empathy machine, educational access and digital ‘medicine’, this blog proposes one central idea – Immersive experiences have the power to change our world for the better.
Increased Empathy
For many humanitarian organisations, VR is the perfect tool for raising awareness of social and environmental issues. The immersive technology puts users in ‘someone else’s shoes’, and goes above and beyond traditional 2D depictions of war, abuse, pollution, neglect, or injustice. It allows viewers to see directly through the ‘eyes’ of a real or imagined subject and more specifically, VR can create ‘embodied cognition’. It forces the user not just to ‘see’ from another perspective, but to experience a complete transformation of the self. What the VR avatar looks like, they look like. Users are no longer passive spectators, but ‘real-life’ participants in the action. Their intellectual and emotional grasp of an experience is matched by a feeling of embodiment: a sense that they are ‘physically’ present in the virtual world.
This radical, emotive immersion achieves a variety of things. First and foremost, it cultivates heightened feelings of empathy, compassion and understanding, allowing users to strongly relate to their virtual avatar. Secondly, it has a proven effect on users’ actions. According to Stanford scholars, people who experienced a 7-minute VR piece on homelessness were more likely to sign a petition for affordable housing than those who interacted with written/2D media on the same topic.1 In other words, VR doesn’t just encourage empathy, it transforms empathetic feeling into altruistic action.
Improved Access to Education
VR, however, isn’t just an ‘empathy machine’. It’s also an ‘equality machine’, helping to make education more accessible. It has the potential to help achieve one of the UN’s 17 ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, bringing quality educational opportunities to impoverished families, women, rural communities, and developing regions.
With virtual technology, access to expensive, complex educational equipment doesn’t have to be the privilege of the wealthy. Educators who can’t afford costly science equipment (or the staff necessary to maintain it safely) can use VR headsets to simulate scientific experiments at a fraction of the cost, with lower risk to students and higher rates of retention. In theory, the experience could also contain virtual avatars of some of the world’s top scientific minds, allowing access to industry experts without needing them to be ‘really there’. VR can also make educational field trips cheaper and easier. Initiatives like Google’s ‘Expeditions’ allow students to experience culturally significant venues like the Guggenheim Museum of Art in virtual space, removing the need for travel costs.
Crucially, as VR hardware develops, virtual reality’s educational potential becomes even greater. The development of ‘standalone’ headsets such as the Oculus Quest don’t require any external processors or sensors. This makes them less expensive and simpler to operate whilst remaining interactive, allowing educators to adopt the technology more easily and at a larger scale.
Treatment for Phobias
Virtual reality ‘medicine’ is still in early, experimental phases, lacking the hard evidence needed for mass adoption. Nevertheless, initial research suggests that VR could be effective in treating phobias.
One study tested the idea that VR exposure therapy could reduce its participants’ fear of heights.2 Using VR, users could explore simulated high buildings whilst being coached by a virtual therapist. After six VR sessions, the participants’ fear of heights almost halved. By contrast, participants who received ‘usual care’ had no change in their levels of anxiety. These findings are far from conclusive, with a relatively small test-group and short test-period. However, it points towards VR as an emergent medium for exposure treatment, offering therapists a more immersive, more flexible, safer (and theoretically more effective) method of allowing patients to ‘face their fears’. Virtual phobia-solutions also have the additional benefit of requiring no face-to-face interaction between the patient and therapist – reducing costs and replicable for a large user-base. Similarly, initial trials have been planned in conjunction with the NHS to test virtual reality’s ability to treat patients with psychosis.3
Final Thoughts…
VR’s impact is clearly extensive. Not only is it transforming the way we do business, but also how we relate to one another, how we access education and even how we address (and perhaps redress) our own fears. With this in mind, one thing becomes clear – while it’s essential that VR continues to make breakthroughs in its software, hardware, and specifications, the potential of immersive technology can be measured in more ways than just technical performance. VR is not just innovative but also significant, with the power to do great things for the world.
References
[1] Shashkevich, A. (2018). Virtual reality can help make people more compassionate compared to other media, new Stanford study finds. Stanford News. Available at: https://news.stanford.edu/2018/10/17/virtual-reality-can-help-make-people-empathetic/ [Accessed 10/05/19]
[2] Bazian. (2018). Could Virtual Reality Help Cure Fear of Heights? Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/news/mental-health/could-virtual-reality-help-cure-fear-heights/ [Accessed 10/05/19]
[3] £4 million project to make virtual reality treatment available in NHS mental health services. (2018). National Institute for Health Research website. Available at: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/4-million-project-to-make-virtual-reality-treatment-available-in-nhs-mental-health-services/7852 [Accessed 10/05/19]
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