Can Disgust Change Our Morality? | Big Think

Can Disgust Change Our Morality?

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What would it be like to live in the body of someone else? Since the dawn of mankind, people have imagined what it would be like to inhabit another body, just for a day or even for a few minutes. Thanks to the magic of VR, we can now do that. Jeremy Bailenson, the creator of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, has designed a VR experience called 1000 Cut Journey that may change the way people see race: by experiencing it firsthand. Jeremy explains to us, "You start out as an elementary school child and you’re in a classroom. You then become a teenager and you’re interacting with police officers. You then become an adult who’s going on a job interview, and what you experience while wearing the body of a black male is implicit bias that happens repeatedly and over time." Jeremy is brought to you today by Amway. Amway believes that diversity and inclusion ​are ​essential ​to the ​growth ​and ​prosperity ​of ​today’s ​companies. When woven ​into ​every ​aspect ​of ​the talent ​life ​cycle, companies committed to diversity and inclusion are ​the ​best ​equipped ​to ​innovate, and ​improve ​brand image ​and ​drive ​performance.

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JEREMY BAILENSON:

Jeremy Bailenson is founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Thomas More Storke Professor in the Department of Communication, Professor (by courtesy) of Education, Professor (by courtesy) Program in Symbolic Systems, a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a Faculty Leader at Stanford’s Center for Longevity. He earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. He spent four years at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then an Assistant Research Professor.

Bailenson studies the psychology of Virtual Reality (VR), in particular how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. His lab builds and studies systems that allow people to meet in virtual space, and explores the changes in the nature of social interaction. His most recent research focuses on how VR can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health.

Bailenson consults pro bono on VR policy for government agencies including the State Department, the US Senate, Congress, the California Supreme Court, the Federal Communication Committee, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the National Research Council, and the National Institutes of Health. His book Infinite Reality, co-authored with Jim Blascovich, was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court outlining the effects of immersive media.

He has written opinion pieces for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, National Geographic, Slate, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has produced three VR documentary experiences which were official selections at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016 and 2017. His new book, Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do is out now.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Jeremy Bailenson: Most psychologists agree the best way to have somebody increase empathy is to engage in something called perspective taking.

Imagining that you’re someone else trying to cognitively and emotionally understand some event from their perspective. It’s hard to do that. Often we don’t have the facts, meaning I don’t know what’s going on through your mind. I don’t have an experience of what it’s like to be you.

And it’s also very effortful. It’s hard to actually imagine what it’s like to be someone else. And, in fact, when it comes to empathy we’re often thinking about unpleasant things, for example, what it’s like to be homeless, and the brain doesn’t want to go there.

So VR is a really neat tool because it takes that cognitive effort out. It increases accuracy so you’re not operating on stereotypes you may have in your mind, where you can actually experience the life of someone else as that person lives.

Since 2003 I’ve been running experiments that take a person, puts her in virtual reality and gives her an experience that you couldn’t have in the real world. This could be being in a different place or it could actually be becoming a different person.

So the first study we ran was about ageism and we took college-age students, and they walk...

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