When White People See Themselves With Black Skin, Something Interesting HappensPosted in Articles, Europe, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2014-12-18 00:45Z by Steven |
When White People See Themselves With Black Skin, Something Interesting Happens
The Huffington Post
2014-12-15
Anna Almendrala, Healthy Living Editor
Macrina Cooper-White, Associate Science Editor
The antidote to racism partly lies in empathy, or the willingness to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” as the saying goes. But scientists from universities across Europe are taking the maxim one step further, providing people an opportunity to experience life in someone else’s skin by experimenting with virtual reality as a means of helping people shed racial stereotypes.
Researchers from London and Barcelona teamed up to discuss their recent experiments on virtual reality and race in an opinion piece for the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, published Dec. 15. The researchers found that if people got the chance to physically experience their own body with different skin colors (or ages and sexes), their unconscious biases against other racial groups could be diminished.
This isn’t merely a question of changing mentality or perception. The experience of “living” in different skin triggers sensory signals in the brain that allow it to expand its understanding of what a body can look like. This can “cause people to change their attitudes about others,” wrote the study’s co-researcher, Professor Mel Slater, a part-time professor of virtual environments at the University College London and research professor at the University of Barcelona…
Read the entire article here.