Assistant Professor of Psychology Gili Freedman and colleagues recently published an article entitled, "The Effect of Embodying a Woman Scientist in Virtual Reality on Men’s Gender Biases," in the American Psychological Association's new open access journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior.
"In this paper, we examine how embodying a man or woman scientist in virtual reality (VR) affects men's gender biases toward women in STEM. We created a VR game in which participants play as a physicist who is studying multiple dimensions. Male undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a man or woman avatar and completed measures of gender bias before and after the game. We found mixed results for the effectiveness of this game intervention: participants who embodied a woman scientist saw the categories of "women" and "scientists" as more overlapping and felt positively about women, but they viewed their own character in a more negative light. There were also no effects of embodying a woman scientist character on broader measures of bias (e.g., implicit bias, stereotype endorsement). Taken together, the study shows some of the promises and pitfalls of VR interventions for gender biases."
You can read the full article and view a one-minute summary video here.
