Periodic Reporting for period 1 - contactVIRT (Intergroup Contact in Virtual Reality: Comparative Effects of Two Contact Strategies on Reducing Prejudice and Increasing Trust Between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland)
Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-08-31
Decades of research have corroborated the positive consequences of intergroup contact in different settings and with diverse groups (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). However, contact is less likely to occur in post-conflict contexts such as Northern Ireland, in which almost 94% of schools are divided along religious lines and by the so-called “Peace lines” consisting of walls, gates, and iron fences separating Catholic and Protestant districts. In other words, people grow up with relatively scarce contact with members of the other community. This lack of contact cultivates stereotypes, distrust, and negative attitudes from an early age that may prove resistant to change. Faced with this scenario, alternative contact strategies such as virtual reality (VR) have been considered but less fully explored for intergroup contact. Current VR technology integrates multimedia systems that allow users to experience a full 3D interaction and communicate with others through avatars. The degree of users’ self-involvement with avatars makes VR more relevant for contact because it brings into play their personal and social identities, and it affects their behaviour, for example, by promoting empathy and prosocial behaviours towards outgroups (Behm-Morawitz, Pennell & Speno, 2015). As VR technology has become more economically and ergonomically accessible over the last years, with users even accessing VR through their smartphones, it is imperative to analyse the extent to which contact in VR favours intergroup relationships. The primary objective of this proposal is to test the effectiveness of VR-contact on reducing prejudice and promoting trust and prosocial behaviours between Catholics and Protestants in the post-conflict context of Northern Ireland. Particularly we seek to: 1) Compare the relative strengths of gratitude induction and recategorisation contact strategies in successfully diminishing prejudice and increasing trust towards the outgroup, 2) Evaluate underlying mechanisms of avatar communication (i.e. avatar identification, embodiment) in terms of promoting contact effects, 3) Compare the relative effect of including a gaze feature in avatars as a mean for conveying realism to interactions to a condition in which this feature is not available. Gazing avatars are often evaluated as more “realistic” and “attractive”, and 4) Identify the communication strategies used by participants to approach or detach from other participants based on their primary social identities and on the experimental salient identities.
The project was organised in 6 work packages (WPs). WP1 included the strategies oriented to the completion of the research project and the completion of a secondment, which was carried out at the Community Relations Council of Northern Ireland (CRC). WP2 sought to build independent and interdisciplinary research and teaching skills. The Fellow undertook 31 training workshops, courses, seminars, and conferences. For transfer of knowledge, the Fellow built a UK-Ireland international network of researchers on the use of communication technologies for intergroup contact, with the involvement of 24 researchers from each country. Since 2021, the fellow has been appointed Teaching Fellow at the host institution, participating in the delivery of UG and PGR research tutorials, lab sessions, and supervision of UG thesis dissertations. WP3 involved the input of the external stakeholder for shaping the project to expand its social impact. An additional qualitative study was run with the input of 43 community workers, practitioners, and members from both communities. WP4 included the ethical and logistic steps necessary to carry out the main study. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the empirical collection of data is still ongoing. WP5 comprises activities to disseminate the research results. Since the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the collection of empirical data, the products from this WP have been limited. Preliminary results have been presented in 5 international conferences, 3 invited talks, and one publication is in review. WP 6 includes dissemination activities targeting non-academic audiences, such as a website for the project (ContactVIRT), promotion of activities in Twitter, participation in the Being Human Festival, articles in the CRC Newsletter, participation in the Good Relations Week, and a CORDIS podcast.
So far, this MSCA Fellowship has contributed to place VR in the map of inter-community interactions in Northern Ireland. The collaboration with the CRC increased awareness about the use of technology to deescalate intercommunity tensions and make people feel “safer” for dialogue. The publication in review collected the impressions from both, people who lived the Troubles and university students. This provided a contrasting perspective of the conflict and ways to cope with it. The participation in the Good Relations Week involved the presentation of these results to practitioners and people related to community building, who were informed about the advantages of VR for bringing together people who otherwise would be reluctant to meet face-to-face. Likewise, the recreation of a popular contest show in a VR environment with Catholic and Protestant participants has been watched by almost 1000 people around the UK; thus helping popularize VR as a rich medium for the reduction of sectarian prejudice. This MSCA allowed the Fellow to improve his leadership skills and increase his network for international collaboration projects. Researchers in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom were recruited by the Fellow as part of a multidisciplinary research project on the use of technologies for social interaction and prejudice reduction. The network is intended to increase research into the exploration of communication technologies for the improvement of North-South intergroup relations in the island of Ireland. In addition, the Fellow’s UG thesis students are working on the creation of knowledge about online platforms for reducing prejudice towards Chinese minorities, diminishing loneliness in online learning, and evaluating predictors of inter-community dating. Although the project has not been finished due to the Covid-19 delay, it has already attracted a community of students, research assistants and staff interested in focusing their research on social interaction, training, and mental health by means of VR, which was previously an unexplored area. The results are expected to promote the introduction of this technology in the classroom for the enactment of prosocial behaviours between members of the two main communities. Previous research in intergroup contact has informed education policies enacted by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The outcomes of the project are expected to follow the same path in terms of the VR conditions more favourable for positive inter-community relationships.