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Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters Too
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.
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.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
If the person who is escaping is Asian, would they be more inclined to ignore white people while trying to get out?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
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.
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.
Humans feel more empathy for members of their "tribe". News at 11.
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.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Damned bastard Khajit and Argonians, can't trust any of them ... wait, what?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I suspect the same study would reveal males will go out of their way to rescue females more than other males. Oh the horrorz!
Me, I go after the perceived socioeconomic position of any character I help, because I want greater quest rewards/loot.
And I shoot almost everyone in the face. Is the takeaway from "virtual reality" studies that we're all more likely to perform headshots in our murder sprees?
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.
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!
I recall having read about a study that indicated skin color bias is not completely attributable to cultural bias, and that even darker skinned toddlers are more likely to view lighter skinned people as being friendlier.
It's going to be affected by ALL forms of discrimination.
Does the black person ask for help from the white cop or black person?
Does the woman ask for help from the male or female?
Does the child ask for help from an adult or another child?
Is the Chinese citizen going to ask for help from a communist party member or another citizen?
Would a white male US citizen ask for help from the tattooed hippie or the IRS official?
When you're under duress you seek help from those of like kind because you have to make a snap judgement call on trustworthiness- it's not nefarious it's common sense.
That when people had time to rationalize out the situation the "racism" virtually disappeared should show that it's not racism at all but basic societal match.
We can make as homogenized a society as we can try
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.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
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:
Obviously, the first axiom — and conclusions — is the politically-correct official stance championed by the government. And I'd like to share it too. But it contradicts some of the well-known facts:
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.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm holding my breath for the next round of calls to ban video games.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Try being one of the small races. People go out of their way to antagonize you.
The Drow race are legitimately douchebags though. I think we can all agree on that.
Nothing has changed.
http://phocks.tumblr.com/post/...
The article doesn't go into any detail about how black participants responded, or do they assume only whites engage in racism?
Then again while its socially acceptable to disparage white people with terms like redneck, hillbilly, trailer trash, cracker, etc. I could care less about studies like this.
Kinda like how i always run over women in GTA and take their money? err,, i mean hookers.
"What happened since the '70s that made racists so afraid to call themselves such?"
in the 70s you actually had to DO something racist to someone of a different race because of their race to be labeled as such. now, apparently (& to your point) which blob of pixels on a display I choose to run over w/my virtual humv vs which I spare is prima facie to tag me w/the same label as someone who burns a cross in someone else's yard.
gee, you think just maybe that might have something to do with some people's desire to avoid the topic altogether?
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?
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.
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...
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Where was the trial with a black person trying to escape? There should be no surprise that someone is more likely to save someone else they see as their self in VR.
Disclosure: did not read TFA
tl;dr: WE HAVE ACHIEVED PEAK CAUCASITY
...). The argument became so over simplified it becomes self-contradictory.
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; which is actually somewhat encouraging).
You see, we europeans with crooked teeth are long past carnal racism based on obvious cues like skin color - owing to being class based serfdoms, instead of color based chattel slavery cultures in recent history. So we're left with no choice to hate thy neighbor based on ethnicity and/or nationality.
Also, taking this all the way to ad-absurdum conclusion - a liberal not being fond of a conservative for being bigoted is racist (because hating political leaning is racist, just like hating russians because of stalin, or hating germans because of hitler or
When the shouting match between stormfronters and white guilt becomes polarised like it did recently, new words get invented and old meanings get redefined just by the sheer volume of simpleton shit sprung in both directions of camps of this career activism.
Random (not)interesting tidbit: The nationality people around the world are racist towards the most is not blacks (or "people of color", or whatever its called today), not even chinese, but North Americans as a whole. This is just a speculation - eastern parts of europe, arab nations and large parts of asia would unilaterally prefer to sacrifice an american, instead of one of their supergroup. American race being defined by your accent and certain "american" behaviorial stereotypes.
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.
Love sees no species.
Instead of some anomalous redneck occurrence? Maybe we should deal with the fact that people DO tend to look after their own. Pretending cultural differences don't exist has fucked up the world for years now.
that is only one of the many reasons you should feel bad.
If you want help in an MMO try playing as a big titted female. (of any race, even Tauren)
In many cultures light/white represents the more good side while dark represents the more evil side. This is the case in all monotheist religions, and Islam for example has some verses in the hadith where white goes to paradise and black goes to hellfire. But this has nothing to do with the race, or the color of the skin, since another verse gives further information about it that no white skin is better the a black skin, and no black skin is better then a white skin, (an so on including other colors).
...
But in Christianity there is also that goodness in the light/white vs the badness in dark/black. And again it has nothing to do with the race. I don't know if such a thing is also present Judaism, but it might be possible since Christianity is sect of Judaism and Islam is a sect of Christianity (or whatever you have to call it).
But the black/white dualism is not only present in these monotheist religions, it is also present in old and modern pop culture. Witches wear black hats and Angels are dressed in white. Jedi's use the light force, the Sith use the dark force. In computer terminology there are black hats (hacks for personal gain) and there are white hats (hacks for tests). This has nothing to do with racism but the dark vs light dualism is so deeply ingrained into the culture that we automatically link dark with evil and light with good.
In my village there was still an old pagan festivity that existed since Roman times. This festivity ended on the second Sunday when a black doll was carried around on a cross and burned at stake. The cross was the Christianized element and the date too (the Sunday after the local church's patron's name day instead of mid summer). This doll did not represent a person with a dark skin, but symbolized all the evil thoughts and deeds that the villagers did during the previous year. People could openly confess something evil they did or put a letter in the doll whit their confession, to ask for forgiveness, or clean their soul.
This pagan festivity survived for a good 2000 years, until some political correct person decided it was time to use the racism word in the late 80ies. Of course, when the word racism is used, case is closed. 2000 years of tradition can not overrule political correctness, and the fest was forbidden in the 30-40 villages that still practiced this tradition. Apparently that political correct person saw a resemblance with the KKK in the US, but our pagan fest had nothing to do with the KKK. It was a much older tradition that started when the 'white' people probably didn't even know about the existence of 'black' people. The Christianized version could even be explained as worshipping a black Jesus, except for the fire
If you are going to label everything and anyone who favors a lighter color over a darker color with the word racism, then our whole culture, tradition, religion, pop culture, can be called racist. You will have to reeducate everyone and rewrite many literatures, but it will not solve racism. When Star wars will use Green Force and Blue Force racism will not come to an end.
Cito said: "They did this study with kids and dolls in the 80s.
We are programmed to prefer our own kind and ethnicity.
It's 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."
THANK YOU. EXACTLY. (And I would have logged in but could not get the widget to come up.)
It's been proven time and time again that whites have a natural aversion to blacks; it's been shown in MRI scans and various studies.
Don't you think it's time we stopped vilifying racists and admit it's a normal reaction which we need to teach people to suppress instead of pretending that if you're racist you're just a bad person?
all human cultures were highly suspicious of bastard children
Another "fact" you pulled out of your ass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
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 internet isn't some equalizing playing field making everyone the same footing. It just seemed that way to white tech heads at the time because being white tech heads they're default and thus invisible. When you're not the default the internet can make some interesting assessments about you so you sometimes are put in the box of having to stick out or pretend to be white. The "level playing field" of the internet is basically just that anyone can pretend to be white.
didn't real the full article but I was admittedly surprised that they corrected for bystander effect
that makes the results a little more chilling. I has assumed they just either helped or walked off assuming someone else helped. Still an interesting read on their methodology
and of course the abstract give an interesting context to this paper
Just another second banana
I guess it makes a little more sense now.
Of course it affects virtual reality characters, second life users have known this for YEARS.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/...
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/...
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/...
http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com...
Something similar was tried 10 years ago; but a fat woman versus an athletic woman. What about big-breasted versus flat-chested or white collar clothes versus blue collar clothes or young versus old or male versus female? Unfortunately, we have social and sexual preferences that affect how we treat other people, even when they're in life-threatening situations.
Even 'CSI' pointed-out people care more about a blonde-haired white girl than a black boy.
Blacks are and Hispanics (my bad, there are no Hispanics in the USA anymore they were all killed and replaced by something called a non Latin speaking Latino) are 10 times more discriminatory than whites. When will people just learn to be good to one another. If you can judge someone by the shoes, dress, and manner of carrying oneself why the fuck can't you judge someone by the color of their fucking skin. Yet blacks judge and laugh at white people all the fucking time for looking ridiculous (in their eyes). If a white person went on TV and laughed at black people because they can't swim, they would by crucified. Yet black people love laughing at crackers because they can't dance.
There is no such thing as racism, there is only people being human. It is natural for humans to group together and support their group. However people can use their intelligence to realize we are all human beings.
I would like to shoot the next guy that calls someone a racist. If you call someone a nigger (even in a good way) and you happen to be white, you get in trouble. Yet you can call someone every fucking curse word under the sun, and it is cool. Nigger is just latin word for black. It is all in the context of how you use it.
All this media white guilt is really turning me into a racist. No matter what the fuck I do, I will always be considered a black hating privileged prick due to the color of my skin. I might as well live up to the image. Might as well go out and lynch black men, and rape black women. If I do, I will be living up to the expectations that society has of me. I will also be making Fox, and CNN a shit tone of money when the run the story on the news for the next 20 years.
Yes, I am going to kill some niggers now. I am white, and that is just what white folks do.
There could be a subconscious element that leads to a virtual character reminding you of someone you know in real life, family, parents, friends, coworkers, random person you see on the street regularly, that leads to a false positive for the researcher, which totally fucks the 'racism' angle of this 'study'.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
And where do I get in line for it because this sounds like the easiest job ever.
I think I'll make a virtual reality woman that you need to talk to... and then track people's eye movements based on breast size.
You can make the check out to cash.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Check out the book "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives."
You will learn about studies of unconscious racism showing black against black biases, and unconscious racism even from the most left leaning progressives, and a team of psychologists managing racial imagery during a presidential election.
Especially when the participants know it's a simulation. They can fuck around all they want without consequences. It doesn't say how they behave in the real world.
I think a better experiment is this: give (white or whatever) participants $25. Tell them if they give the money to the (black or whatever) person in the next room, they'll receive $50 at the end of the test (the other person will not prompt for the money; or perhaps ask for a smaller/larger amount that doesn't match what the experimenters told them). Draw conclusions from people's behavior.
This experiment is still flawed, but somewhat less so.
Maybe the result came, because Hollywood taught us in movies that the chance of survival for black people is quite low compared to white people, so there is no point in saving them?
"automatic categorization processes that originate from unwanted, unconscious social and cultural biases"
Seems to be a biased Scientific experiment. They are determining which biases are wanted and unwanted instead of just analyzing which biases they find. They are basing their entire experiment on a group-think foundation that pre-assigns social values and standards. Sounds like an experiment with an agenda.
'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam;
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
Casteism