Using immersive environments to study prejudice, intergroup contact and gender identity

Immersive virtual reality provides new possibilities for studying intergroup relations, prejudice, and social categorization in highly controlled yet socially meaningful environments. At the Cyberpsychology Lab, we design and develop custom immersive scenarios to investigate how people perceive members of different social groups and how virtual interactions can be used to understand and potentially reduce intergroup bias.

A central focus of our research concerns avatar social categorization. Before virtual reality can be effectively used for intergroup contact interventions, it is necessary to understand when an avatar is actually perceived as a socially meaningful ingroup or outgroup member. Our studies therefore investigate how characteristics such as ethnic appearance, stereotypical cues, numerosity, embodiment, and immersive context influence whether virtual characters are categorized at the individual, ingroup, outgroup, or dual-identity level.

Building on theories of social identity, self-categorization, and intergroup contact, we use immersive environments to study the psychological mechanisms underlying ethnic prejudice and intergroup bias. Custom VR scenarios allow us to systematically manipulate social cues and interaction conditions while maintaining a high degree of experimental control.

Another important research line focuses on prejudice toward sexual and gender minorities, including the use of immersive experiences to investigate attitudes, social perception, and transphobia. Virtual reality also allows us to explore gender identity through embodiment and alternative forms of self-representation, creating opportunities to examine how experiencing different virtual identities may influence self-perception and attitudes toward others.

Our research is particularly interested in the conditions under which virtual contact can produce meaningful psychological change. This includes examining embodiment, cooperation, shared identity, social categorization, and the distinction between interacting with a virtual individual and interacting with someone perceived as a member of another social group.

By integrating immersive technology with social psychological theory, we aim to develop more rigorous and theoretically grounded approaches to using virtual reality for the study and reduction of prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup conflict.