Meta Research Grant: Learning Empathy & Compassion with VR
Awarded a research grant (2022 - 2024) from Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) to serve as Principal Investigator for the project: "Identity & Ethnic Discrimination in Africa: from VR-Perspective-taking to Action."
This prestigious grant supports groundbreaking research conducted at the Virtual Human Computer Interaction (VHCI) Lab at Lagos Business School. The project investigates the potential of virtual reality (VR) technology to foster empathy and compassion, particularly within educational and social contexts, and to reduce ethnic discrimination among secondary school students in Nigeria and Kenya.
The research aims to understand the mechanisms through which immersive VR experiences can cultivate perspective-taking and prosocial behaviors. By exploring innovative VR applications, we seek to develop effective interventions that can contribute to positive social change and enhance human connection in an increasingly digital world.
In a randomized controlled trial with 703 adolescents aged 13–18 across four secondary schools in Kenya and Nigeria, we compared first-person VR embodiment with third-person observation. The counterintuitive finding was that third-person observation outperformed first-person embodiment on most empathy and compassion outcomes. These effects persisted at a four-week follow-up. The results have been accepted for publication at the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2026).
The funding enables the VHCI Lab to expand its research capacity, utilize state-of-the-art VR equipment, and collaborate with international experts in the field. Findings from this project are expected to contribute valuable insights into the design and implementation of VR for social and emotional learning.