Virtual Reality Not for “Being Someone” but for “Being in Someone Else’s Shoes”: Avoiding Misconceptions in Empathy Enhancement

This article was part of the research project EthAI+3 (Digital Ethics. Moral Enhancement through an Interactive Use of Artificial Intelligence), funded by the State Research Agency of the Spanish Government (PID2019-104943RB-I00). JR also thanks to the funding of an INPhINIT Retaining Fellowship of the La Caixa Foundation (Grant Number LCF/BQ/DR20/11790005).In this article, we show that Ramirez et al.’s ethical rejection of empathy enhancement through VR is based on confusion. First, we show that this misunderstanding stems from the conception of empathy-enhancing simulations solely as failed attempts at “being someone else,” along with ignoring the crucial difference between the psychological perspective-taking processes of imagineother and imagine-self. Then, having overcome that misconception, we argue that the ethical misgivings about the use of VR to promote empathy should disappear and that these projects have greater potential for behavioural change than purely sympathy-focused interventions.State Research Agency of the Spanish Government PID2019-104943RB-I00La Caixa Foundation LCF/BQ/DR20/1179000