Virtual Reality and Prevention of Bullying
Condition: Bullying of Child
MeSH terms: Bullying
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The lack of empathy towards victims of bullying is thought to play a main role in this
      extended and pernicious peer victimization behaviour. Thus, promoting empathy in school
      programs might be a promising approach for bullying prevention. Virtual reality (VR) allows
      creating an environment very similar to the real world and has proved to promote empathy.

      Therefore, by employing VR, pupils may better understand and feel the experience of being
      bullied. As there is no evidence of the efficiency of VR in bullying prevention, the first
      step is to validate the content of the environments created.

      In this line, the current study aims to investigate if 360º-videos produce a truthful
      experience of being bullied superior than the observed in traditional computer screens. The
      effect of all, 360º-videos and 2D computer screens will be assessed through objective
      (electrodermal activity -EDA- and heart rate -HR-) and subjective (self-administered tests)
      measures.
    

Detailed description: 
      Introduction and Rationale: Previous research suggests that working on the development of
      cognitive-emotional skills, and particularly on empathy toward victims of bullying, may be a
      central component for the success of school bullying prevention programs. On the other hand,
      virtual reality (VR) technology allows adopting the perspective of the world of others, and
      thus has been claimed to be a powerful tool for eliciting empathy in different domains (cf.
      Slater & Sánchez-Vives, 2016). Therefore, VR might play a role in bullying prevention
      programs, by helping pupils to understand how it feels to be bullied, as a way to increase
      empathy towards victims of bullying. However, currently empirical evidence of the
      effectiveness of VR in this context is lacking. A key step in the validation of this use of
      VR is to understand how the immersive presentation of bullying scenes shot from a
      first-person perspective is experienced by children, compared to the same scenes presented in
      less immersive displays. In particular, in order to demonstrate the potential of VR
      technology in this regard, it is necessary to examine the advantages that VR technology (and,
      more specifically in this case, immersive presentation of 360º-video) presents over more
      common devices (a computer screen).

      Study goals and Hypotheses: The overall goal of this study is to examine whether 360º-videos
      representing situations of bullying from a first-person perspective produce a realistic
      experience of being bullied, and that the presentation of such contents in an immersive mode
      (using a VR headset) elicit a more realistic and arousing experience than the same contents
      in a less immersive format (a traditional computer screen).

      This is the first step in a wider research project; in subsequent steps, the investigators
      will assess the effects of these type of videos on empathy towards victims of bullying and,
      eventually, on prevalence of bullying behaviour.

      The central hypotheses to be tested will be:

      Hypothesis 1 (H1): Contents representing situations of bullying from a first person
      perspective will elicit on participants realistic feelings of being bullied, compared to
      contents representing other high-school daily situations not involving (physical or verbal)
      violence.

      Hypothesis 2 (H2): Immersive presentation (i.e. 360º-video contents watched in a VR headset)
      will elicit higher arousal and higher perceived realism of the scene than the same contents
      presented in a less immersive display (a computer screen).

      In order to test these hypotheses, the investigators will collect measures of
      psychophysiological measures of arousal (electrodermal activity -EDA- and heart rate -HR-)
      and emotional regulation (heart rate variability -HRV-), self-reported emotional arousal and
      valence, as well as three self-reported measures of the realism of the experience of being
      bullied, including: (1) participant's perception on to which degree the represented situation
      can be considered bullying, (2) participant's feelings of actually being in the represented
      scene ("presence"), and (3) participant's feeling of actually being bullied while watching
      the content.

      The investigators expect that, compared to watching videos representing other high-school
      daily situations not involving (physical or verbal) violence, watching videos representing
      situations of bullying, participants' EDA, HR, HRV, and self-reported arousal will be higher
      (H1a, H1b, H1c, and H1d, respectively), self-reported valence will be more negative (H1e),
      scores of feelings of being bullying and actually being in the scene will be higher (H1f and
      H1g, respectively), and the perception of the scene as bullying will also be enhanced (H1h).

      It is also expected that, compared to the videos presented in a screen, while watching the
      videos in a VR headset participants' EDA, HR, HRV, and self-reported arousal will be higher
      (H2a, H2b, H2c, and H2d, respectively), self-reported valence will be more negative (H2e),
      scores of feelings of being bullying and actually being in the scene will be higher (H2f and
      H2g, respectively), and the perception of the scene as bullying will also be enhanced (H2h).

      In addition, it will be explored whether the experienced arousal and perception of realism is
      associated with personality traits, such as being uncaring, unemotional, and callousness. The
      investigators believe that pupils with higher scores on the mentioned traits will experience
      less arousal (subjective and psychophysiological) when watching the videos with bullying
      content.

      Experimental design: The study adopts a within-subject design in which each participant will
      watch four videos, containing the four possible combinations of two independent variables:
      Level of immersion (VR headset / computer screen) and Type of content (Bullying / no-bullying
      content).

      The materials to be used in the experiment will be eight videos representing different scenes
      from the perspective of a girl (to be watched by female participants) and four videos
      representing different scenes from the perspective of a boy (to be watched by male
      participants). Among each group of eight videos, there are four pairs. The two videos of each
      pair involve the same location, point-of-view, and actors, but in one of them there is a
      bullying situation and in the other there is a daily situation not involving any form of
      violence (e.g. children chatting about the last weekend).

      Each participant will watch four scenes, two containing bullying scenes and the other
      containing daily non-violent scenes. Also, two of them will be presented in a VR headset
      while the rest be presented in a computer screen. The level of immersion and type of content
      in which each scene is presented will vary among participants following a Latin-square
      design, in a way such for the whole sample of participants, all the scenes will be presented
      across the two levels of immersion and the two types of content. The order of the
      presentation of the four conditions will be randomised for each participant.
    

Intervention name(s): Virtual Reality of Bullying
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Immersive videos (360º) filmed by 12-14 year old pupils who, guided by professional actors, represented the subjective experience of bullying.
Eight different potential situations designed depending on the sex of the pupil were filmed:
Girls:
Classmates steal her personal diary
Classmates tear her clothing
Classmates insult her and steal her belongings
Classmates deliberately exclude her in class
Boys:
Classmates exclude him while playing with a ball
Classmates bother him in the dining room
Classmates insult and steal him in class
Classmates insult him and steal his belongings
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Intervention model description: Each participant, depending on their sex, watch two minutes of each video content:
Bullying content in virtual reality
Bullying content in a regular 2D screen
Pupils playing without bullying content in virtual reality
Pupils playing without bullying content in a regular 2D screen
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Basic Science
Keywords: Virtual reality; Psychophysiology; Empathy