Above: Male test subject in VR given the option to "shock" female avatar
I recently told you about the VR-based recreation of Milgram’s infamous shock experiment, in which test subjects became traumatized, even knowing that the victim of their shocks was only an avatar. In an equally remarkable follow-up study, researchers recently used this VR Milgram's scenario to test another hypothesis: Would a traumatizing experience in VR influence how many shocks a volunteer would subsequently give out?
"Milgram can be used as a moral thermometer of empathy," as Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco at Microsoft Research, a co-author of the original study, explains to me. "The idea is that if you have some priming experience before doing the Milgram test, it will change your performance. In this case, through triggering empathy."
In the follow-up study led by her co-author, Dr. Mel Slater at the University of Barcelona, this priming experience was a virtual reality simulation of sexual harassment. In it, a group of men in a public space become increasingly hostile to a nearby woman (video below):
