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Virtual Superpowers Translate To Real Life Desire To Help
sciencehabit writes "You don't have to be Superman to help those in need, but you might be more willing to do so if you get a taste of his powers. When subjects in a new study strapped on virtual reality helmets, half of them were given the ability to fly around a simulated city, while the others sat passively in helicopters. Some were allowed to merely explore the city from their aerial vantage points; others were told they needed to find a missing diabetic child and deliver his lifesaving insulin. Regardless of which task they performed, the subjects granted the superpower of flight were more likely to help a researcher pick up spilled pens after the experiment was. The results have researchers wondering if our brains might react to the memory of a virtual experience as though it had really happened. If so, we may be able to use virtual reality and gaming to effectively treat psychological disorders such as PTSD."
No need for the VR hardware BS, just ask a DM / GM about how their players behave after leveling up. In fact you need a correction factor for "3 dimensional thinking" vs "2 dimensional thinking". Think how cranky Kahn was in ST:2 and his legendary two-dimensional thinking.
I think you need to correct the study for happiness, although how you'd do it without bias is a mystery. Its probably easy to half ass it, like most soft sciences.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
For the majority of us, the vast majority of our day involves saying "hi", smiling, putting things in the trashbin, paying for our lunch, holding the door open for someone, thinking about hanging out with friends over the weekend and other stuff which is just plain good. We call it 'neutral', but most of it is good. So when given extra power, we tend to do good things with it...at least at first. When someone wins the lottery or gets a big bonus, they tend to throw a party and buy stuff for themselves AND their friends. Doing nice things makes us feel good. Thinking of harming others is just not pleasant for most of us. Thinking of bad things is not pleasant. I believe we do, however, spend a lot of time thinking about bad things, and so we tend to get this false feeling that everything and everyone else is bad. It's that whole opposite charges attract deal. Because people are so generally good, we have a strange attraction to generally bad things. But generally we're good.
I'm getting PTSD from the disjointed grammar in the summary
You mean Post Traumatic Summary Disorder?
Wouldn't giving a sociopath simulated superpowers just turn him into a supervillain though? Forget the pens, he'd smash the coffee-maker!
Everything is better with chainsaws.
When someone wins the lottery or gets a big bonus, they tend to throw a party and buy stuff for themselves AND their friends.
Exactly but my thought on reading the article is perhaps it is far more fun to be flying around the city by yourself rather than being stuck in a helicopter (which may have frustrating controls). If so perhaps all this experiment has shown is that when people are happy and content they are more willing to help out. Conversely if you have been frustrated and are unhappy you are probably less likely to be thinking about helping others.
Thank you for being the first person to state the obvious here.
Oh, and let me paraphrase the summary:
We gave one group of subjects strawberry ice cream cones. We gave a second group dry spaghetti noodles.
Afterward, members of the first group were more willing to do us a favor than members of the second group.
Therefore, we conclude that there is a link between strawberries and altruistic behavior.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
These researchers aren't the ones designing new technology, or indeed having any interest in it. These researchers are working on figuring out the unsolved mysteries of how the human brain works, so we can do useful things with those CPUs, network infrastructures, and compression techniques. These researchers are exploring the roots of helpful, kind, benevolent behavior, so that our future societies can encourage people to be nicer to each other, further lowering crime rates and improving the overall quality of life.
Then the nice happy people can sit back, relax, and watch streaming HD porn with their powerful computers, fast networks, and lossless compression.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.