The enemy's gaze: Immersive virtual environments enhance peace promoting attitudes and emotions in violent intergroup conflicts

| openaire: EC/H2020/335607/EU//Emotions in ConflictPerspective-taking is essential for improving intergroup relations. However, it is difficult to implement, especially in violent conflicts. Given that immersive virtual reality (VR) can simulate various points of view (POV), we examined whether it can lead to beneficial outcomes by promoting outgroup perspective-taking, even in armed conflicts. In two studies, Jewish- Israelis watched a 360° VR scene depicting an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation from different POVs-outgroup's, ingroup's while imagining outgroup perspective or ingroup's without imagined perspective-taking. Participants immersed in the outgroup's POV, but not those who imagined the outgroup's perspective, perceived the Palestinians more positively than those immersed in the ingroup's POV. Moreover, participants in the outgroup's POV perceived the Palestinian population in general more favorably and judged a real-life ingroup transgression more strictly than those in the ingroup's POV, even five months after VR intervention. Results suggest that VR can promote conflict resolution by enabling effective perspective- taking.Peer reviewe

Virtual reality-based conflict resolution: The impact of immersive 360° video on changing view points and moral judgment in the context of violent intergroup conflict

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.We present an experimental study conducted in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that examined the effect of immersive 360° video on inducing a more critical perception of the ingroup’s actions in the conflict. An immersive experience of a simulated conflict scenario filmed from the outgroup’s point of view led to the judgment of the ingroup actors’ behavior as less moral and less justified compared to watching the same scenario as a two-dimensional video. This effect was not mediated through increased outgroup perspective-taking and empathy but through higher levels of hostile emotions toward the ingroup actors, which in turn were influenced by an increased sense of presence and engagement in the immersive experience. These findings provide initial evidence for the still widely unexplored potential of virtual reality as a new method for conflict resolution.Peer reviewe