“Empathy at Scale” What a delightful title for the new project at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL.) The project “seeks to design, test, and distribute virtual reality interventions that teach empathy.” The idea is that when people experience life through someone else’s eyes, they develop a more empathetic attitude toward them. The project is notable in that it is reaching outside the usual academic testing demographic of 20-something college students who want to earn $50 in a study. Instead, the project will collect data from around 1,000 participants who are ‘demographically diverse.”
Behavior being tested includes “prejudice and bullying.” and motivational factors such as “immersiveness of the simulation, emotional valence of treatment, strength of group affiliation.” The project is funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the academic lead appears to be Dr. Jamil Zaki of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.
Source: https://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/#empathy-at-scale