Roundtable: Raising Empathy through Virtual Reality.

Virtual reality (VR) has been described as the ultimate empathy machine; but does it deserve this reputation? Thanks to its features of embodied technology, VR can let users virtually walk in someone else’s shoes. In addition, multi-sensory VR experiences can present evocative and heart-wrenching stimuli. For these reasons, VR seems to be a likely candidate to foster empathy. However, the published literature indicates that the impact of VR on empathy is complex and depends both on the type of VR and also the type of empathy being evaluated. The present chapter compares two meta-analyses which suggest that VR can elicit empathy, but the theoretical factors on which the technology has more efficacies are in contrast. In this chapter, these discordant meta-analyses are discussed, and the reasons why they find different results are theorized. We attempt to answer when and how VR could be an empathy machine. We conclude that low-tech but evocative storytelling is most likely to yield emotional empathy, and embodied experiences that encourage perspective-taking will improve cognitive empathy. Although we attempt to present the latest empirical evidence about empathy and VR, we are aware that the scientific consensus around this topic is likely to evolve in the future.