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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.
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.
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'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.
Not if you are an elven girl naked except for high-heel boots and miniature (but armored) underwear with eyes the size of your (substantial) breasts.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The Drow race are legitimately douchebags though. I think we can all agree on that.
Nothing has changed.
http://phocks.tumblr.com/post/...
I only ask for help from people wearing blue jeans and t-shirts. As long as they aren't wearing any kind of funny hipster hat or overpriced designer hoodie.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
You should look up the history of the term cracker before assuming that it is a disparaging remark.
The study didn't go into how black people respond due to no black people being in the study as another poster above linked to the study and said.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
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.
that is only one of the many reasons you should feel bad.
So should you. It's been a term of disparagement from as far back as 1590.
That article supports what I said. Or did you just read the part about Shakespearean times and totally miss the part where a portion of the population of the US called themselves crackers? You could even point to the part of that article where Jimmy Carter was called out as being of cracker origin, and it was said that if he knew, he would have called himself a cracker.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Ah! Sorry, so there is an obscure culture of a whopping 40K people (or about 0.000625% of humanity), who are an exception.
Does it make a difference? Does my argument change in the slightest, if you replace the words "all human cultures" with "almost all human cultures"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Any color socks with any kind of footwear is acceptable to me. Barefoot is fine too, but it's harder to go to public places that way.
My friend has clipless cleats on his sandals for biking. And yes, he wears socks with them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why can I not? I just did. If the amendment does not affect the argument — if the argument remains just a convincing with "almost" as it was without it — it is fine. We are, presumably, trying to improve our understanding of life here, not play a game.
I have, actually — the term "bastard" is a derogatory one, and not just in English (two other languages I know attach the same negative connotations to fatherless children).
Are you sincerely questioning the premise, however, or just grasping for straws? Are you really not convinced, growing up in a single-parent household is a handicap?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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
It's real because people like rev whats his face keeps it alive.
oh Sharpton? Rev Al Sharpton is keeping racism alive? Good lord if you guys put half the amount of effort into redefining things like "White Knight" from feminist insult to antifeminist insult and "Social Justice" to "Social Justice Warrior" and "racism" to "race baiting" into actually addressing the matters at hand half these problems could be a fraction of what they were instead of being multiplied.
Just another second banana
How is cracker not a disparaging remark?
"Cracker," the old standby of Anglo insults was first noted in the mid 18th century, making it older than the United States itself. It was used to refer to poor whites, particularly those inhabiting the frontier regions of Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. It is suspected that it was a shortened version of "whip-cracker," since the manual labor they did involved driving livestock with a whip (not to mention the other brutal arenas where those skills were employed.) Over the course of time it came to represent a person of lower caste or criminal disposition, (in some instances, was used in reference to bandits and other lawless folk.)
Calling someone a bandit or lawless because of their skin color is disparaging. Or do you think all white people worked in manual labor?
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...
The article then goes on to describe it as being a much older word used to refer to a certain group of people:
Ste. Claire pointed me to King John, published sometime in the 1590s. One character refers to another as a craker — a common insult for an obnoxious bloviator.
What craker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?
"It's a beautiful quote, but it was a character trait that was used to describe a group of Celtic immigrants — Scots-Irish people who came to the Americas who were running from political circumstances in the old world," Ste. Claire said. Those Scots-Irish folks started settling the Carolinas, and later moved deeper South and into Florida and Georgia.
Which these people then went on to call themselves crackers
"In official documents, the governor of Florida said, 'We don't know what to do with these crackers — we tell them to settle this area and they don't; we tell them not to settle this area and they do," Ste. Claire said. "They lived off the land. They were rogues."
By the early 1800s, those immigrants to the South started to refer to themselves that way as a badge of honor and a term of endearment. (I'm pretty sure this process of reappropriating a disparaging term sounds familiar to a lot of y'all.)
You can try to claim that it was a terrible term, but it is a term a people use to refer to themselves (to this day), and they don't believe that it is a racist term they are calling themselves.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
a common insult for an obnoxious bloviator.
What part of that is not disparaging? In fact what hilariously left out of your quotes...
"It's a beautiful quote, but it was a character trait that was used to describe a group of Celtic immigrants — Scots-Irish people who came to the Americas who were running from political circumstances in the old world," Ste. Claire said. Those Scots-Irish folks started settling the Carolinas, and later moved deeper South and into Florida and Georgia.
But the disparaging term followed these immigrants , who were thought by local officials to be unruly and ill-mannered.
"In official documents, the governor of Florida said, 'We don't know what to do with these crackers — we tell them to settle this area and they don't; we tell them not to settle this area and they do," Ste. Claire said. "They lived off the land. They were rogues."
Those people used the term AFTER it was being used to insult them. They chose to try and appropriate the term to offset the insult. Kind of like owning an embarrassing nickname in school. Besides, Celts (Scots-Irish) = white people. They are Caucasian, yes. But not all white people are Celts.
The article in no way supports what you said.
You should look up the history of the term cracker before assuming that it is a disparaging remark.
When blacks use it, it means a bigoted white person; comparing the whites they're interacting with to the whites they dealt with during slavery. When a WASP uses it, it's meant to disparage Scots-Irish migrants to this country. When a Northerner uses it, it's comparing the person to oppressive slave owners.
Further, and this is really what matters, as person with Irish heritage, if someone called me a cracker, I'd find it offensive. I'm neither bigoted (or rather I don't try to be); I'm not unruly and ill-mannered; I've never been a slave owner; and no ancestors that I know of have either. More importantly, if I am, it's not because I'm white or of Irish descent.
Many black people call themselves "Nigger" too, doesn't mean it can't be racially offensive.
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.
'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam;
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
Casteism