This project is based on the belief that people have the ability to change their views, and thereby their behaviour and priorities, if they reflect on and care about a topic. In cognitive science, this is called meliorist thinking, which Professor of Psychology Keith E. Stanovich describes as: “the doctrine that the world tends to become better or may be made better by human effort”(Stanovich 2010, 8). A meliorist is therefore one who feels that education and the provision of information could help to make people more rational, and “could help them more efficiently further their goals and bring their beliefs more in line with the actual state of the world” (Stanovich 2010, 8). It is an optimistic approach that I am happy to believe in.
The fact that meliorist thinking is one doctrine among others also demonstrates that rational thought cannot be considered to be a given or that human effort necessarily ends in improvement. This project must therefore explore the processes that are involved in human thought and rationality in order to understand whether and how a participant can be motivated to reflect and change their views and behaviour.
Rational according to what?
The ‘great rationality debate’ discusses what ‘rational’ actually means, including whether the opposite of ‘rationality’ is ‘irrationality’ (faulty reasoning) or 'arationality' (lack of reasoning).
Aristotle made the distinction between humans and animals based on rational or arational thought, with humans being defined as rational beings. Cognitive science now divides human thinking into degrees of rational or irrational thinking, dividing rationality into two categories – epistemic and instrumental:
“Epistemic rationality concerns how well beliefs map onto the actual structure of the world. It is sometimes called theoretical rationality or evidential rationality […] The simplest definition of instrumental rationality is: Behaving in the world so that you get exactly what you most want, given the resources (physical and mental) available to you. Somewhat more technically, we could characterize instrumental rationality as the optimization of the individual’s goal fulfillment.” (Stanovich 2010, 6)
Even this short description shows that human reasoning is not a process that is based on what we might think of as ‘cold logic’. It is, at its core, affected by emotions that are linked to wishes and beliefs. Stanovich (2010, 5) also underlines that the definition of rationality is normative, implying that one way of thinking (the rational) is the correct one.
This exposes an ethical challenge for my project. I am basing this project on what I personally think is rational thought – among other things, my meliorist thinking. But this idea is, in itself, based on my personal wishes and beliefs. What I perceive to be rational will differ from my participant’s views. I must remain conscious of this distinction, and work to make sure that I do not attempt to transfer my rationality to another person, but instead work to ensure that my interactive experiences motivate the participant to reflect based on their own rationality. The former would amount to propaganda, while the latter would be to inspire a participant to process and come to their own conclusions.
My communication challenge can thus be rewritten as: How can I create content that will motivate people to actively reflect on the situation of Children Born of War (CBOW), while allowing for the different views and wishes of different participants?
Read more about CBOW in the text “Lebensborn and Children Born of War” in the library.
How does human thinking work?
Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman 2013) introduced me to the dual-process theory in cognitive science. This describes human decision-making as consisting of two different processes – the fast decision-making of intuitive judgement, which takes little effort, and the slow, considerate process, where humans expend cognitive resources by considering several sides of an issue:
“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.” (Kahneman 2013, 20)
Stanovich (2010) adds to this model by splitting System 2 into the two sub-categories of the reflective mind and the algorithmic mind. The former decides when the rationality of System 2 needs to be activated, while the latter processesing the challenges that are let through the thought. This means that the conscious thought process of System 2 has its own gatekeeper, guarding and rationing the daily dose of cognitive energy available to the algorithmic mind.
Emotions and impulses
As humans, we tend to identify with System 2 – “the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do” (Kahneman 2013, 21). We overlook the important role that System 1 plays in our decision-making, and how it is influenced by emotions and quick impulses. It is described as a continuous, automated process of evaluating attention, “effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2” (Kahneman 2013, 21). System 1 also makes decisions based on existing beliefs and attitudes on its own, without System 2 interfering:
“I have presented System 2 as active in deliberate memory search, complex computations, comparisons, planning and choice. In […] examples of the interplay between the two systems, it appeared that System 2 is ultimately in charge, with the ability to resist the suggestions of System 1, slow things down, and impose logical analysis. Self-criticism is one of the functions of System 2. In the context of attitudes, however, System 2 is more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a critic of those emotions – an endorser rather than an enforcer. Its search for information and arguments is mostly constrained to information that is consistent with existing beliefs, not with an intention to examine them.” (Kahneman 2013, 103–4)
The limited resource of the algorithmic mind is not only rationed by decisions being made unconsciously by the less energy-draining System 1, but is also confirming unconsciously formed attitudes that have been created by impulses and emotions. This partly explains how biases that are reproduced in society can influence an individual’s decision-making without the person being consciously aware of it.
Read more about the reproduction of biases in the text “Prejudice and symbolic violence” in the library.
Inspiring a high level of rational thinking – or use of the algorithmic mind – thus involves creating a setting where System 1 or the gatekeeping reflecting mind do not jump to conclusions or discard the input, but instead forward it to an active, resource-draining processing that utilises the participant’s rationality.
The material I present for processing must avoid bias- or rejection-triggering impulses or emotions and be accepted as relevant to the participant’s wishes and beliefs.
Motivational thinking
To an even greater degree, the material will need to be motivational. Again, this communication challenge comes back to a person’s emotions. Motivation is based on an individual’s motives – their wishes. The level of motivation is influenced by desirability and feasibility, with desirability being subdivided into motive strength and incentive value (Braver et al. 2014). The first relates to the class of incentives that the individual finds attractive, while incentive value “is defined in terms of the properties of the stimulus, and specifies the behavioral choices made within a particular domain of action. As an example, high achievement motive strength will cause an individual to see challenging tasks as attractive and seek out opportunities to engage in them. Tasks that provide the opportunity for achievement pride will have high incentive value and will be associated with specific behavioral choices that indicate high effort expenditure and task persistence” (Braver et al. 2014, 446)
An experience can therefore be rewarding if it offers challenging tasks that can deliver a sense of achievement. The emotional reward of pride powers the effort expenditure, and the topic, context or actual value the activity produces are less important. This effect can be seen in many games, where solving puzzles can demand a high expenditure of algorithmic System 2 thinking, although the result is ‘just’ the pride in having solved a Sudoku challenge.
While the serious topics of othering and CBOW might trigger biases or uncomfortable emotions in many participants – and not be inducive to the creation of motive strength for all – introducing elements that have incentive value might still manage to motivate a broader range of participants.
Impersonal and emotionless?
The topic for my artistic project is based on real events and how human behaviour creates lifelong suffering for innocent children. This kind of material is most often communicated through journalism, documentary films, academic research, non-fiction books or exhibitions.
Serious topics are normally presented in a mode that is consistent with the gravity of the issue – ‘gravitas’ – stern faces with authoritative voices. Gravitas was one of the Roman virtues, and can be described as “seriousness […] as weight, dignity, and importance and connotesrestraint and moral rigor. It also conveys a sense of responsibility and commitment to the task” (Wikipedia, 2023). For me, gravitas is a tool for the expression of authority and power – communicating that I should receive and accept the message without questioning it. As I do not believe in the concept of objective truth (instead believing that all ‘truth’ contains a position of power and dominance), I experience the use of gravitas as a mode of manipulation that is intended to pacify my own reflection.
Read more about the idea of ‘objective truth’ in the text “Unwriting objectification” in the library.
There is also an irony at play here, as the dual-process theory and definition of rationality show how closely human thinking is linked to individual emotion, while gravitas signals a closed-off, emotional restraint. Is the gravitas mode designed to pacify my System 2 and remove my motivation to process, as reaching my personal motives does not seem feasible in the face of such an opposing power? Does it signal that ‘resistance is futile’ and that the ‘truths’ should be assimilated by System 1 together with other societal biases, according to the processes that are linked to symbolic violence?
Read more about symbolic violence in the text “Prejudice and symbolic violence” in the library.
Trust and relationships
There are exceptions, however. The drawing above shows a white-haired presenter on the British public broadcaster BBC. I have seen his face for many years. I know the long reporting history of the BBC. There exists a relationship between me and the BBC brand due to their reputation and consistency, which makes me more willing to interact with their material. I trust the brand.
Simpson (2007) describes trust as involving “the juxtaposition of people’s loftiest hopes and aspirations with their deepest worries and fears. It may be the single most important ingredient for the development and maintenance of happy, well-functioning relationships” (Simpson 2007, 264).
Tagliaferri (2023) says that trust is linked to risk and reliability, and describes interpersonal trust as an attitude that must fulfil two factors: “1. The trustor must rely on the trustee in order to fulfil purpose ψ. 2. The circumstances in which trust is elicited must contain at least two elements of freedom. Specifically, the trustor must be free to choose whether to rely on the trustee or not; moreover, the trustee must be free to choose to betray the trustor by not contributing to the fulfilment of the purpose which is part of the trusting relationship”(Tagliaferri 2023, 227–28). He extends the definition of ‘interpersonal’ to also include relationships between the trustor and digital experiences, as long as they offer interaction. If this freedom to withdraw is not present, the relationship is rather to be described as obligation or coercion (Tagliaferri 2023, 229–30).
As a creator wishing to reach out to new people, I will be shaping a new relationship between myself and the participant, indirectly via my VR experience. There will probably not be any pre-existing level of trust other than the participant’s general level of openness towards strangers and the VR medium, and I must assume that the participant will be considering risk and reliability when approaching the experience.
Setting the creation of a trustworthy experience as a development goal for the VR experience seems to be a constructive way to approach the challenge of navigating the impact of emotions on human thinking. The creation of trust involves openness and freedom, which is the opposite of coercion or obligation. It involves reliability, which can be shown through transparency and consistency. It also involves demonstrating a low level of risk – creating an experience that respectfully protects the integrity of the participant and actively invites free reflection.
My creative challenge can now be rephrased as: creating a trustworthy VR simulation that presents the topic of CBOW and objectification in a motivational manner, while taking into consideration the differences in the rationality and emotions of participants.
I must also consider that I will not be in control of the conclusions at which others arrive. All I can achieve is the motivation of a process of reflection that might not otherwise have occurred and that will have the potential to change the way in which a person thinks. How it will change will be totally dependent on the individual’s world view and wishes.
Manipulating emotions
Offering freedom and minimising risk includes avoiding triggering any sense of being manipulated for the participant. This is also an ethical issue for this artistic research project. I do not wish to force a position onto anybody, and I need to find the balance where I can communicate non-fiction content in a more emotionally engaging way without overstepping the line between freedom and coercion. The experience must be designed and tested to ensure that that this balancing act is achieved as well as possible, respecting that the rationality, emotions and thinking of participants may differ from my own.
Is it, however, possible to think of anything more totally manipulated than a virtual reality experience? It consists of wholly artificial surroundings and interactions with a limited set of affordances, which are edited and selected based on the creator’s intentions. The only agency the participants are offered is where to place their attention, the individual choices taken in the interactions and the chronology of their user journey.
The technology involved in a VR experience itself represents a removal of freedom from the participant. It hijacks the participant’s full field of vision and multidirectional hearing by means of a VR headset and audio headset. Motion sensors register the participant’s movements so that the digital experience can both represent and react to the participant’s body, thereby working to create the illusion that the participant has a bodily presence inside of the artificially rendered experience. A VR experience blocks out everything else and demands full attention.
The only way to avoid or reject its contents is to physically remove the headset or activate the exit menu, if one is available. Both choices are cumbersome and, in themselves, a hindrance to a participant’s freedom. I have personally experienced being subjected to uncomfortable and unwanted content before I thought to remove the headset and extricate myself from the experience. Research on online communities has already documented many examples of virtual acts of violence, with users being abusive to others in real time (Wolfendale 2007). I have not found similar research concerning the ways in which one-user digital experiences can be experienced as abusive, but can, based on my personal experience, confirm that the risk is there. Although it only took a few seconds before I freed myself from the sensory input, I can still remember the discomfort that was created in that short space of time.
The effort it took for me to break out of the VR experience also demonstrates how immersive a VR experience can be. No other medium envelops a participant in such a total way, blocking out most of the real world and delivering artificial input to as many of the participants’ senses. A VR experience also commands total attention by excluding distractions, only including what the creator finds relevant. Forcing the participant’s perspective and focus can heighten the intensity of the experience.
An empathy machine?
The VR medium’s potential for generating emotions is still not fully understood, but it has already been described as “the ultimate empathy machine”. Chris Milk coined this phrase based on a UN report that showed how his VR piece “Clouds over Sidra” (2015) led to more monetary donations to the UN than other comparable information activities (Campbell 2017). Milk’s claim initiated a heated debate on VR and empathy that is still ongoing, as being able to generate empathy is seen by many to be ‘the holy grail’ when it comes to effective communication.
Empathy and sympathy are both terms that describe a level of human compassion that can motivate prosocial behaviour. Herrera et al. (2018) define sympathy as “the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another” and empathy as “the ability to share and understand someone else’s emotions”. The former involves understanding how another human being feels, while the latter means being able to envisage oneself in the other’s situation – sometimes described as ‘walking a mile in someone else’s shoes’. In 2018, Herrera et al. confirmed Milk’s claim about VR and empathy through a large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective-taking tasks (‘imagine-other’ and ‘imagine-self’) with different levels of immersion (traditional vs. desktop computer vs VR):
“Unlike traditional media, the high level of immersion, feeling of presence, and the ability to vividly experience any situation from any perspective, may uniquely position VR as an effective perspective-taking medium.” (Herrera et al. 2018, 4)
Compared to other media, the affordances of VR make it relatively easy to position a participant inside a simulation of a different person’s surroundings or situation. However, this positioning involves giving the participant a defined perspective – for example, as a passive witness or an active character, or as playing out the first-person main character.
Herrera et al.’s study documented that the perspective of ‘imagine self’, where the participants were instructed to imagine how they would feel if they were in someone else’s situation, “leads to empathy, personal distress and an egoistic motivation to help”, and was more effective than the ‘imagine other’ perspective[1]. The study also claims that VR can be used to bypass participants’ existing biases, it underlinesthe amount of control a VR experience has over the artificial environment being experienced by the participant, and also states that the intuitive perception of the artificial world works in the same way as in real surroundings:
“the user can solely focus on acting and reacting within the experience. This positions VR perspective-taking at an advantage in terms of accurate content, in comparison to traditional perspective-taking, since participants do not have to rely on their existing schemas or biases. It is also methodologically advantageous since it makes it possible for all participants to undergo the exact same experience, as opposed to the lack of experimental control that occurs when participants use their imagination during traditional perspective-taking tasks. Embodied cognition theory postulates that cognition is an interaction of the body and mind that takes place within the context of a specific environment. Past studies show that physical movement can improve a participant’s performance while completing cognitive perceptions and behaviors. […] Affordances, not available in less immersive media, allow users to gather spatial information about the virtual environment using the same perceptual systems they would use to gather spatial information about the real world. Furthermore, past research has shown that the gathering of more perceptual information results in a more accurate mental representation of the physical environment. Thus, the user’s ability to actively engage with and move around inside an IVE (immersive virtual environment) may result in improved cognition due to the additional information users are able to collect through physical movement, and may have a positive effect on empathy and prosocial behaviors." (Herrera et al. 2018, 4–5)
This describes VR as working on human emotions in the same way as real world experiences, while offering the creator total control of the surroundings, which does not exist outside of VR. This seems to confirm that VR has especially strong affordances when it comes to emotionally charged interactions and bypassing System 1’s biases and gatekeeping.
However, Herrera et al. are studying VR experiences that seem to offer very limited interaction for the participants. A VR experience describing homelessness places the participant inside the car of a homeless person, and asks them to find a toothbrush by moving their head. Even this simple interaction increased the impact of the story of homelessness, compared to the impact for participants in the parallel non-VR experience, and led to “more positive, longer-lasting attitudes toward the homeless up to two months after the intervention” (Herrera et al. 2018, 19). However, the agency offered to the participant must be considered minimal.
Ramirez et al. (2021) chose VR experiences that offered a more detailed simulation by placing a participant in the narrative perspective of another person (i.e. by taking the homeless person’s perspective in VR instead of ‘visiting their home’), and studied how this could ‘elicit empathetic responses’ in simulated scenarios (EEEs). They concluded that this this “empathy-based nudging through specific perspective-taking” will “almost always be unethical to develop or deploy”:
“VR empathy simulations deceive and manipulate their users about their experiences. Despite their often laudable goals, such simulations confront significant ethical challenges. In light of these goals and challenges, we propose VR designers shift from designing simulations aimed at producing empathic perspective-taking to designing simulations aimed at generating sympathy for their targets.” (Ramirez, Elliott, og Milam 2021, 527)
Whereas Herrera et al. conclude that VR creates strong empathy, Ramirez et al. find the level of this strength to be dangerous, and even recommend that VR developers should pull back from empathy-inducing simulations and reduce their ambitions to eliciting the less effective emotion of sympathy, in order to “avoid the most serious ethical issues associated with VR nudges, semantic variance, and intersectionality”.
I agree that the forced perspective-taking that Ramirez et al. describe can be abusive and therefore ethically problematic. It reminds me of my personal experience of “Missing 10 hours” (2022), where I was placed in a nightclub-scene where my ‘friend’s’ drink was drugged. I had to listen without agency as she was being molested. It forced me to inhabit the choice of not interfering, which was in direct opposition to my own morals and felt highly uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, I still find the article’s conclusion to be too bombastic, and think that their study overlooks the amount of freedom that is offered to the participant in a simulation. In the experience described above, I was given the agency to choose to drag the girl into a taxi to protect her. The choices made available to me gave me the freedom to follow my own morals after having reflected on the options. My chosen solution left me with a sense of satisfaction and pride.
In my view, offering more agency and freedom to the participant will remove the feeling of an enforced perspective, replacing it with the opportunity to test and play how a participant would solve the simulated challenges of a different person. The participant would then ‘walk in the shoes’, instead of ‘being walked by the shoes’.
Nudging System 1
Being inside an animated VR experience can feel like wandering around inside a three-dimensional work of art, with colours, sound design and animations that transport the participant to, for example, an enchanted forest or futuristic town. Such surroundings also evoke emotions. The design of our surroundings can also imperceptibly influence our behaviour. Such ‘empathy-based nudging’ is already well established in decisions concerning the placement of goods in stores, or the use of music in queues or elevators in order to motivate consumption or increase the patience and well-being of people in queues. According to Hansen and Jespersen (2013), nudging manipulates choice:
“Advances in behavioural economics and psychology have revealed how our decision-making and behaviour are systematically biased by the interplay of psychological with what ought to be, from the perspective of rationality, irrelevant features of the decision-making context. In general, these behavioural insights teach us how decision-making contexts may systematically lead us to fail in acting on our well-informed intentions or achieve our preferred ends” (Hansen og Jespersen 2013, 3).
Such irrelevant features can, for example, be mood-influencing, fun surroundings or attention-grabbing music. My personal reaction to the VR experience “In pursuit of repetitive beats” (2022) is one example. The experience placed me inside a fast-paced, beautifully crafted representation of the illegal rave culture in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s.Utilising fans and vibrating backpacks, I received a multi-sensory impression of the loud music at a rave and an exciting car chase involving the police. Interviews were inserted in the form of talking heads on photographs and posters. The creators describe the experience as “a multi-sensory joyride into the past, bringing to life the stories of the promoters, police officers, and rave-goers, whose rivalries and relationships drove a revolution in music and society. Multi-sensory room-scale interactive VR enables participants to feel the anticipation, trepidation, excitement, and euphoria that was Acid House” (“In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats – East City Films” 2022).
I did find the experience to be exciting. But what was described as bringing ‘the stories’ to life does not mention the role of drugs in the rave scene or discuss any other negative elements – which seems like a very glaring omission when discussing ‘acid house’ and using smiley-faces (often symbolising ecstasy) in their marketing (see my drawing of their marketing material above). I was allowed to participate as ‘myself’ – not forced into anyone else’s perspective – but I felt as if I was being blinded by the fun effects so that I would not ask the difficult questions. I do not know if the creators of “In pursuit of repetitive beats” wished to manipulate me into adopting a completely positive impression of the rave culture, or simply wanted to offer me the chance to experience the teenage excitement of young British rave-goers.
In a way, the creators’ intentions do not matter. As the participant, it is my user journey and the kind of experience that I have that creates the resulting meaning. My rationality, my personal experiences of the rave culture, my morals when it comes to drugs and police – all these things are part of shaping my reaction to the VR experience. Had I been very opposed to everything the illegal rave scene stood for before the experience, I might even have found it intrusive and uncomfortable if I had felt that the VR experience had manipulated me to like what I do not morally support.
At the same time, this is at the core of simulation. It is when we understand the situation of others that we might become more motivated to engage in humanitarian efforts. It may be that the emotions created by “In pursuit of repetitive beats” can explain something about that phenomenon precisely because it plays on emotions and senses and shows a one-sided version of the culture. To me, however, it is an example of how the total emotional impact of a VR experience must be balanced with a sense of respect for the participant’s individual freedom of choice, if its intention is to create a process of conscious reflection by means of System 2. The alternative is to evoke emotions generated by the instinctual reactions of senses and nudging of System 1.
Art manipulating empathy
Finally, the discussion of VR and empathy also needs to consider that an artificially created reality is also a piece of art. According to Ingar Brinck, art is inherently empathy-inducing and motivates reflection, working as a kind of simulation. She states that an “aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from ones’s own”, and that it is a “reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork” (Brinck 2018, 201). As in the previous discussion of trust, the focus is on a relationship between the viewer and the artwork, and a process of interpretation by the viewer that Brinck describes as an embodied, visual exploration of the artwork together with an implicit and explicit bodily reaction to the artwork. These ‘perception-action’ and ‘motion-emotion’ processes “cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own”.
By avoiding the established communication modes of journalism or documentary, and instead aiming to present content in a format that invites this interpretation as art, the chosen format should in itself motivate a participant to reflect and interpret.
Communicating with emotions
Choosing to use the recognisable mode of journalistic reporting creates a well-established format that signals sincerity, but it also reduces the participant to a recipient who is asked to accept the content based on the reliability of the source. Art, on the other hand, inspires an active process of interpretation in the participant. It speaks to the participant’s physical body and senses, indirectly and directly, invoking emotions such as empathy and resulting in a kind of simulation – creating an understanding between the participant and the creator. It is also a process that invites free reflection by the participant, opening up for – and respecting – the different experiences that the artwork might inspire.
To sum up this reflection on the different aspects connected with communicating non-fiction through emotionally charged interactions, my conclusion is that I must look at my experience as material that is intended to create a relationship between me and the participants. The experience does not consist of material with clear messages that are intended to be absorbed and adopted, but art that is intended to motivate an active processing. It is essential that the material offers the participant freedom and agency through interactions and clear exit-possibilities. This also creates a platform for the extensive use of the many manipulations that are possible in a virtual reality. The exclusion of information, music, movement, sound design, animated effects, bionic feedback – the list of manipulating affordances is long, and it can create surprising and magical experiences.
It is my belief that embracing the artificiality and art of VR can help to communicate and create empathy for others – and hopefully make the world a little bit better for it.
I am ending this text on the same optimistic note as it began. Is this, in actuality, an example of my dual-thinking’s confirmation bias, based on my initial stance as a meliorist? The thing is – I cannot really know. This reflection is based on my rationality, which is the only one I have – and, as I have shown, it is based on my wishes and beliefs. So maybe this text really shows how I dearly wish that my conclusion is true. I leave it open to you to decide what you get from it. At the very least, it will show you how I think, while the concept sketches in the kitchen and conclusions in the living room will show you where this thinking led me.
