Empathy and Immersive Storytelling

Virtual reality technology has long been lauded for its potential as an “empathy engine”; however, past research has largely ignored both the cognitive processes that connect the experience of presence to that of empathy and the complex nature of empathy itself. In this project, we examined the potential of immersive experiences to influence three distinct dimensions of empathy—cognitive, affective, and associative—through three dimensions of presence: self-location, copresence, and social realism. The results suggest that the various aspects of the presence experience have differential impacts on users’ empathy toward the individuals portrayed in immersive narratives. This, in turn, helps to explain the conflicting results of previous studies that employed a more simplistic operationalization of presence and empathy.

For this project, our team reviewed hundreds of immersive video productions to understand how journalists use this technology and to create stimuli that closely reflect real-world narrative content that users are likely to experience. We then created parallel presentations of two different situations involving displaced populations and used these in an experimental study to manipulate the level of immersion while controlling other narrative variables. We then measured the self-reported presence and empathy of participants after reading, viewing, or experiencing these stories to better understand the relationship between immersive storytelling and the experiences of empathy.

Publications and Presentations