University of Twente Student Theses

Login
As of Friday, 8 August 2025, the current Student Theses repository is no longer available for thesis uploads. A new Student Theses repository will be available starting Friday, 15 August 2025.

The Effect of Change of Perspective on Empathy through Virtual Reality

Teernstra, M.A. (2023) The Effect of Change of Perspective on Empathy through Virtual Reality.

[img] PDF
1MB
Abstract:Ethnic profiling is a social problem that gained attention in recent years, due to a number of high-profile incidents primarily in the United States. This research paper studies possible avenues that could help preventing ethnic profiling. This study looks at the effect of change of perspective (CoP) on state empathy, by comparing police officers to students. Trait empathy and psychological flexibility are studied as additional variables to look for individual differences between the participants. With the use of a Virtual Reality (VR) training targeting ethnic profiling of police officers, 38 police officers and 38 students were studied and afterwards half of the participants of each group viewed a video containing a CoP. This study found support for the main effect of CoP on state empathy and this effect appears to be stronger for students. In the additional analysis some effects of gender, reflection, satisfaction and field of study on state empathy were discovered. Finally, no effect is discovered of trait empathy and psychological flexibility on state empathy.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:10 humanities in general, 70 social sciences in general, 77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/97504
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page