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Science

Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters Too 251

Posted by Soulskill from the why-are-you-so-mean-to-your-Sims-characters dept.
vrml writes: You are looking for the exit of a building in a virtual reality experience when a virtual character gets stuck in a room and cries for your help. Could the color of the skin (black or white) of the virtual human influence your decision to provide or refuse help? That's what comes out from a new study published by the journal Computers in Human Behavior. White users were told that they had to reach the exit of the virtual building as soon as possible. The number of users who decided to help tripled when the virtual victim was white rather than black. Researchers tried also other conditions in which they did not put users under time pressure: this reduced the discrimination, although the number of users who helped remained more favorable for the white rather than the black virtual human. The paper explains these results in terms of the automatic categorization processes that originate from unwanted, unconscious social and cultural biases: putting people under pressure increases automatic responses, leading to more discrimination towards the black character.
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Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters Too More

Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters Too

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  • By extension of this research, the test subject not only won't stop to help, he'd probably attack me.

    Moral of the story: racism is stupid.

    • Worthless Study (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thechemic ( 1329333 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:08PM (#49181687)
      I agree. The entire study is stupid. In the study, they admit this correlation:

      Being of the same ethnicity as the helper makes the victim appear more similar, and people act more favorably toward people perceived as similar to them; furthermore, it makes the helper feel a member of the same (ethnic) group as the victim, and members of the same group are treated more favorably than non-members.

      Any person with half a brain would ensure that the participant pool included members from all cultural backgrounds. But that wasn't the case:

      The participants were Italian and white.

      .

      So they tested racial bias for white helping blacks, but they did not test for bias when blacks had to assist whites even though they KNEW there was a strong correlation in willingness to assist when similar cultural backgrounds are involved. Then, they take the test results (which were obvious before the study even began) and ran to the internet with cries of racism amongst Italian and white people. Ridiculous...

      • Re:Worthless Study (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:15PM (#49181767)

        I don't see anywhere that they claim only whites are racist or that they claim other races wouldn't behave otherwise. You seem to be reading that into it so you can angrily dismiss the article.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by thechemic ( 1329333 )

          I didn't "dismiss" the article; I read the whole thing and commented on it.

          If you don't see anywhere they claim that whites are racist then you're illiterate. Racism consists of both prejudice and discrimination, and the article is FILLED from top to bottom of examples where white people exhibit both prejudice and discrimination toward black people.

    • Re:My virtual character has green skin. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Colin Castro ( 2881349 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:35PM (#49181959)
      The study says that in the fire scenario the racism disappeared.

  • What about the race of the escapee? (Score:3)

    by i_ate_god ( 899684 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:10PM (#49181165)

    If the person who is escaping is Asian, would they be more inclined to ignore white people while trying to get out?

    • I would be interested to see how the virtual race affected the outcome.

  • you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cito ( 1725214 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:11PM (#49181171)

    They did this study with kids and dolls in the 80s.

    We are programmed to prefer our own kind and ethnicity.

    Its a tribal thing that protected man for hundreds of thousands of years..

    Political correctness morons want to call it racism but political correctness is anti individualism and promotes group think.

    • Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:30PM (#49181335)

      They did this study with kids and dolls in the 80s.

      We are programmed to prefer our own kind and ethnicity.

      Actually, blacks favored whites too in those studies.

      • This is true. If I remember correctly the lighter the skin of a doll, the more it was preferred. So children with ebony skin still showed a preference towards dolls with mocha skin over dolls with ebony skin.

      • Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @02:36PM (#49182513)
        Actually, I wonder how much of this is actual racism, and how much is ingrained biases based on color. People like white because it's reminiscent of day - light, transparent, revealing. People dislike black because it's reminiscent of night - dark, hidden, obscuring. I'm curious how the experiment would've turned out if they'd run it with a colored inanimate object. e.g. Subjects get a chance to retrieve a woman's white purse vs. a black purse during a robbery.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stdarg ( 456557 )

          That would be an interesting addition. I'd also like to see how varying the color of the player's character affects the results. In computer games, teams are often identified by color (red vs blue) so you'll be more cautious when someone of a different color appears -- they could be about to attack you. Also a racially neutral test where the characters are a completely artificial color like bright green would be good to include.

        • I guess one way to tackle some of these questions is instead to make the doll different colors and different shades of those colors. Test a group with dark green and light green. Another with dark purple and light purple.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Um, yeah wasn't that the same study where black kids thought of the black dolls as dirty, and tightly curled hair as nappy?

      There are so many negative stereotypes thrown at people that they never even give themselves a chance to be free in their own minds

      Look at the products, skin lighteners, hair straighteners, plastic surgery, things that can damage the skin, scalp and cause lifelong disfigurement, but that promise ine thing... to be whiter

      You think that it is normal because you only hang with your white

      • Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lister king of smeg ( 2481612 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:12PM (#49181731)

        Look at the products, skin lighteners, hair straighteners, plastic surgery, things that can damage the skin, scalp and cause lifelong disfigurement, but that promise ine thing... to be whiter

        also hair curling irons, skin bronzer, plastic surgery (can be used both ways) tanning, hair dye promising to be darker.

        some people just aren't satisfied with who they are.

      • I agree there that there are so many bad stereotypes, but stereotype do have a basis in reality (but perhaps self fulling though). We as humans make snap judgement based on looks all the time. They are called first impressions, they are generally fairly accurate and they natural, we need them to function, It is just not feasible to investigate everyone we meet thoroughly. There is nothing we can do about that, but realize they are there and try and compensate. The study even shows we do this, when time pres

        • Yes, there are many stereotypes and the stereotype today seems to be that all white males are evil and ought to feel bad and guilty just because they are white males. As someone who tries hard to do the right thing and treat everyone the right way, I resent that stereotype, and that's true even though none of us are perfect and none of us succeed 100% of the time.

          The study quoted may well be valid, but if the motivation was another case of "proving whites are bad" then it raises real questions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stdarg ( 456557 )

        You think that it is normal because you only hang with your white tribe

        Wrong, things like skin lighteners and hair conditioners are huge in non-white cultures as well. Maybe you need to hang out with some other "tribes" -- like try visiting your local Indian grocery store. You'll see far more skin lightening products than at any store commonly frequented by whites.

    • I'd argue it's still a useful sense, no matter how desperately we try to rationalize it away.

      While certainly the danger from someone you know isn't zero, strangers are many, many times more dangerous in many contexts.

      Just because we've industrialized the proximity of strangers with our cities, doesn't change the simple fact that strangers are more risky than people you know. And while skin-color doesn't equate to "someone I know", even a 5% benefit is likely evolutionarily impactful.

      What's curious is that

    • They did this study with kids and dolls in the 80s.

      We are programmed to prefer our own kind and ethnicity.

      Its a tribal thing that protected man for hundreds of thousands of years..

      Political correctness morons want to call it racism but political correctness is anti individualism and promotes group think.

      Yes, and that's a problem in a multiracial society. Not understanding that is, by definition, racist.

    • If we want to continue this experiment of a pluralistic society, then the behavior needs to be addressed, even if it is baked into us.

    • Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:59PM (#49181617) Homepage Journal

      Human beings are programmed for all kinds of undesirable behaviour. Resolving conflict through violence, males procreating with as many females as possible and preventing others from doing likewise, extreme tribalism etc. That's not an excuse for any of it though, because we are supposed to learn better during childhood and grow up into responsible adults.

      If you can't get past someone's race and stop being biased towards them then there is something wrong with you as an adult. It's excusable in young children who don't know any better and don't control their emotions and instincts, but not in adults.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        If you can't get past someone's race and stop being biased towards them then there is something wrong with you as an adult.

        Like the people who designed this study and only included white people as test subjects ?

      • Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:12PM (#49181725)

        Resolving conflict through violence, males procreating with as many females as possible and preventing others from doing likewise, extreme tribalism etc.

        The pre-European-contact Hawaiians and many other indigenous cultures (pre-European-contact usually) completely disagree with you. In Hawaiian culture, they didn't even have marriage; people just had sex with whoever, whenever, no one knew who kids' fathers were, and the kids were raised collectively by their villages. In some South American tribe, people think kids can have multiple fathers, so women wanting a kid have sex with a bunch of different men they like, hoping to endow the child with traits from each of them.

        It's only various expansionist cultures which pushed the idea that women are owned by men and their sexuality is to be controlled by them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          Fascinating, but missing the point entirely. Societies expect various things of adults that involve resisting animal instincts. One of those things is often not being racist or overly tribal.

          • Societies expect various things of adults that involve resisting animal instincts.

            And how exactly do you know that these primitive societies are the ones expecting things which resist animal instincts, and that other societies (with men hoarding women and restricting their sexuality) are the ones which aren't? How do you know you don't have it backwards?

            Or maybe both societies are resisting animal instincts: maybe the pro-sex societies are resisting mens' instincts, while the anti-sex, pro-monogamy societi

        • Your wording seems to imply you disagree with him, but all you offer is complimentary examples????
          Yes, pre-civilization, everywhere, males had to compete for females and most failed never getting to procreate. And were killed or delegated to beta-male status. So yes there was no concept of monogamy, women just had sex with whoever they wanted. Civilization, almost synonymous with expansionist (they are highly related), sought to fully utilize society as much as possible and speed up the production of chi

          • You seem to be arguing that monogamy is a good thing, which it is not. A 50+% divorce rate proves this.

            In primitive communities, old women didn't need "one and only one man" to provide for her. The whole village provided for everyone. What you contend is an advantage is only so in Randian societies where people don't look out for each other, and everyone is out for himself.

            Your comment also has a bit of very obvious misogyny in it.

            Also, agriculture was a giant detriment to human societies at first. It d

    • What is natural is not the same as what is right. Sure, I can totally accept that the natural inclination of humans is to be racist. We don't have to search to hard in history for cases of tribes annihilating tribes, or nations annihilating nations. It's science, so we should not try to advance beyond this savagery.

      I don't think you understand the point of 'political correctness'. The point is not to deny the base nature within you, but to fight it.

  • More than in real life? (Score:3)

    by digsbo ( 1292334 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:16PM (#49181215)
    I wonder if some people would be *more* likely to discriminate in a VR environment than in real life, because it could let them do something morally repugnant that they wouldn't feel OK about doing in the real world.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      I wonder if some people would be *more* likely to discriminate in a VR environment than in real life.

      Probably. But at least, in a VR environment, skin color is a choice.

  • Fight fight fight (Score:3)

    by Foofoobar ( 318279 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:19PM (#49181233)
    Yeah but in a MORPG, I'll bet when you want a character to group with, you'll pick the black guy over the white guy in a fight.

  • LOL ... (Score:3)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:21PM (#49181245) Homepage

    Damned bastard Khajit and Argonians, can't trust any of them ... wait, what?

  • Even worse (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The number of users who decided to help tripled when the virtual victim was white rather than black.

    When the players themselves were black, they actually stopped to pop a cap in the black victims before they escaped.

  • The results are deliberately skewed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by acwnh ( 749367 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:25PM (#49181281)
    I skimmed through the paper, and it is garbage! All of the participants in the study were white Italians- none were black, asian, or any other ethnicity. Consequently, they drew the conclusions they were looking for when they conducted this "scientific study", i.e. there was racial bias against black victims. I cannot believe this paper was published! The authors did not look at whether racial biases worked against other ethnicities in similar ways or numbers.
    The real racial bias is the study itself!
    • Of course it is, but this skewed experiment will go viral and lead to more cries of racism and civil unrest, more references to Ferguson and how evil non-brown skinned people are, possibly excluding Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.. Like Morgan Freeman says, "If you want to end racism, stop talking about it so much".

      • Non-brown-skinned cops *are* evil. However, cops are not normal people, and the rest of us, regardless of our ethnicity, are not responsible for their behavior (beyond the collective responsibility we bear towards controlling our governments).

        • I think there are some studies that show that even black cops shoot black people more than white people.

    • They also didn't have a good control group (that is, their control group consisted of the same environment, but without the emergency situation). There are so many potential problems that it's hard to draw a firm conclusion. For all we know, the problem was the environment was too dark, and it was hard to distinguish black pixels: that is, dressing the models in red shirts could have changed everything. Here is Richard Feynman talking about a similar problem with rats [columbia.edu] (second half of that link).
    • Surely that only matters if you're concerned about relative racism between white people and non-white people.

      It's looking at the difference in opinion of the participants regarding white people and black people. They did one experiment. They changed a single factor (race). That affected the results.

    • Re:The results are deliberately skewed (Score:4, Informative)

      by Khashishi ( 775369 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @02:41PM (#49182571) Journal

      This is how science works. The experiment does not make claims outside of the experimental parameters. If you interpret that as implying some sort of claim about white people versus black people, that's your problem. Go research other studies to fill in the gaps.

  • I'm very racist when I game, I kill all races with equal prejudice. Now this doesn't mean I shout derogatory racial slurs while playing but I do kill every virtual person no matter skin color, it's just how I roll.

  • Whenever statistics is used to talk about discrimination (sexual, racial, religious), two conflicting sets of axioms are employed by the people arguing. Allow me to enumerate:

    • All groups of people (genders, races, religions) are, on average, the same and any statistically-observed differences in their behavior or treatment can only be due to bigotry.
    • All groups of people (genders, races, religions) are, on average, treated the same and any statistically-observed differences in their behavior or treatment can only be due their own differences from others.

    Obviously, the first axiom — and conclusions — is the politically-correct official stance championed by the government [reuters.com]. And I'd like to share it too. But it contradicts some of the well-known facts:

    1. Vastly more Black kids (67%!) are growing up in single-parent households than any other race [kidscount.org].
    2. Asian kids — who should be, if the "Whites-are-racists" narrative is to be believed, be suffering just as well — are, in fact, doing so well, college admission boards (adherents of the first axiom) penalize them by about 140 points compared to Whites [boston.com]. It is so ugly, some Asians choose to not answer the "race" question on their application at all [usatoday.com].

    So, the first axiom is shot by reality...

    Maybe, it is all about single-parenthood — all human cultures were highly suspicious of bastard children (the very term is a derogatory one). And not because the mother "sinned" — if that were the case, her subsequent marriage would not have absolved the child — but because it is much harder for a single parent to raise a child into a decent human being. So, the "preconditioned" response this study exposed may not be so much about race per se, as about the likelihood of the person to be not right in the head — they are about 2.5-3 times more likely to have grown up without a father.

    It'd be interesting, if the study used Whites, who've grown up in those parts of the world, where Blacks' incidence of single-parenthood is not so awfully lopsided. And compared them with the American Whites.

    • The study apparently used whites from Italy, I am not sure if the incidence of single parenthood works out the same there, but the number of black people overall is much lower there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Maybe, it is all about single-parenthood â" all human cultures were highly suspicious of bastard children (the very term is a derogatory one). And not because the mother "sinned" â" if that were the case, her subsequent marriage would not have absolved the child â" but because it is much harder for a single parent to raise a child into a decent human being.

      I'm not so sure it's bastard children but the decline of the multigeneration household. I think in centuries past, despite the social p

  • I'm holding my breath for the next round of calls to ban video games.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by itzly ( 3699663 )

      They won't be banned, but they'll be required to have equal pixel value distribution.

  • D&D exception (Score:4, Funny)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @12:49PM (#49181501)
    The Drow race are legitimately douchebags though. I think we can all agree on that.

  • Gender (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abies ( 607076 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:01PM (#49181637)

    They should make same experiment with helping man versus woman. I'm quite sure that male participants would rescue more females than males. I wonder how it would other way - there is a good chance that female test subjects would also rescue females more often.
    If this is the case, we would have a perfect proof for gender discrimination and should invest into "leave women to burn" sensitivity trainings for everybody.
    With further studies, they would determine than attractive females are more often rescued then ugly ones, by both sexes. We can then do obligatory anti-discrimination 102 course, "Let pretty ones burn to death". We could practice by burning barbie dolls, as they are promoting unhealthy body proportions. Which would be strange, because it would mean that they are pretty, which they should not be. So, we should be burning dolls with more realistic body build. But should they be white? If they are white, we will get sued for saying that only white ones are pretty. If they are black... HR sensitivity training based around burning black dolls... not good. We want WHITE pretty girls to die, not black pretty girls.
    Marshmallows ! Maybe this will go into subconcious part of the mind - if you burn enough white marshmallows, it will come natural to you later with real fire.

    Now, when I think about our last team building event, there was almost unlimited supply of marshmallows next to the bonfire... can it be already happening?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Leaving women to burn was for most of recent history the default. During the Victorian Age Anglo-Americans really became obsessed with the notion of chivalry, and part of that was the idea that men should help women and children. If the Titanic had sunk in an earlier age you can bet that the life-boats would have been sausage fests. Outside of Anglo-American cultures women and children are often abandoned during strife, depending on how much of this aspect of Anglo-American culture has been adopted (or, of

  • No way! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nedlohs ( 1335013 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:02PM (#49181645)

    It's almost as if helping people survive who are similar to you could have an evolutionary advantage over helping people less similar to you.

  • tl;dr: WE HAVE ACHIEVED PEAK CAUCASITY [twitter.com]

    Actually did RTFA. This experiment in aversive racism seems to assume broad definition racism, ie "us vs them", or group membership.

    At this moment, colloquial use of word "racism" in clickbait media is essentially interchangeable with "bigotry". Sadly how words are used define their meaning, not the other way around. But yes, most people are bigoted. Even the pope is bigoted towards the idea of hell, fallen angels and satan (recently he promised to like gays; wh

  • Are we so sure about that? (Score:3)

    by KermodeBear ( 738243 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @01:29PM (#49181903) Homepage

    automatic categorization processes that originate from unwanted, unconscious social and cultural biases

    Are we so sure that racism stems only from social and cultural biases? Could there not be a biological component to this as well? How does one affect the other? Can we ever know?

    I'm just sayin' - people lay all the blame on society but I wonder how much stems from base instinct.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ezdiy ( 2717051 )
      Closest-to-the kin (you save closest family first, then tribe, then nation, then neighboring allied nations and so on). All of that is of course instinct demonstrated on animal models over and over.

      On animal models its also demonstrated that sheer brute force often wins (ie both racism and rape is ok according to animal models).

      The problem with using biological models, or nature-vs-nurture to justify behavior is that it reduces humans to animals and defy civilization as such, so it usually does not ca
  • Italy is dealing with pretty big immigration problems from Africa. It is kind of a big deal. I'm sure the results would have been similar elsewhere amongst any racial type but.. there is bound to be some deep seated resentment amongst a lot of Italians at the moment towards that other specific skin color.

  • We've seen many studies that most of the time we choose avatars that look like us when given the choice. Most people see avatars as extensions of their choices. When you see someone playing a black character you presume that 90% of the time the person is dark skinned in real life. Thus we carry our prejudices into our virtual worlds with us. I'd be more surprised if that wasn't happening. If we've learned nothing since the 90s and Second Life in the early 00s, it's that contrary to popular belief the intern

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