Toward Measuring Empathy in Virtual Reality

By Kate Carey, Emily Saltz, Jacob Rosenbloom, Mark Micheli, Judeth Oden Choi, Jessica Hammer

Link to full paper here.

Abstract: While VR is often described as an empathy-inducing medium, it is difficult to link specific features of a VR experience to empathy outcomes. This is due in large part to the challenges of measuring empathy constructs, and the difficulty of capturing the subjective emotional experience of a player in VR. In response, the authors propose a lightweight, inexpensive framework that researchers can use to easily establish a VR testing environment and begin gathering data on the subjective empathic response of users in VR. The authors also propose future research needed to expand, modify, and validate the proposed user-testing protocol.