I wonder if the disgust:anger ratio is markedly different depending on the gender of the viewer
Turns out walking through a sketchy area and being harassed are scary no matter what genitalia you have.
Yeah, but the point here is that they were posing as women with female looking avatars. One guy even says that he would have reacted differently if it was male:
Another participant reported that he would have reacted differently had he been in the role of a man, but since he was embodying a female character, he chose instead to walk away.
just a little bit empathy and imagination… and creepy video game textures
I do kinda think everyone should have to Freaky Friday swap with anyone they disdain or don’t have empathy for, and also one random swap.
I’ve never been bothered by catcalling but haven’t had it happen in a dangerous feeling situation.
What? Men feel empathy? Impossible.
Just casual misandry in the wild.
I’m surprised at all my downvotes. Did you think I was being serious?
Do people really say “Impossible” at the end of a comment when it’s not facetious?
My point was that precisely zero people should be surprised by the result of the study. I should have just said that instead of trying to be cheeky.
Lemmy doesn’t always get sarcasm - please don’t stop though!
My guess is that the men who don’t think they’d be bothered by cat-calling are imagining a scenario where there are lots of other people around and the risk of being physically attacked is very low. Being on a nearly-empty subway platform with the only other guy nearby accosting you is a genuinely risky situation even without pretending that you’re a woman.
You said it. I compared notes, once, with my partner at the time, who occasionally dressed a bit flamboyant. Being shouted at made him feel annoyed and sad, which sucks, but he thought that put him on the same level as me.
The difference was he could recall each time he was catcalled, and was surprised to hear it happened just about daily to me. Even more surprised to hear that sometimes when I didn’t respond, guys have followed me and kept shouting. Sometimes in groups. Extremely surprised to hear that on a few occasions I’ve actually had to run from these groups.
Catcalling is easy to ignore, but considering I literally had to run from strangers, I still slide my keys between my knuckles and get ready to sprint whenever I hear it.
One time I was one of the very first people to play an MMO so my friends and I all grabbed up some really good names that are always taken before we start. I made six characters, two female, one of which I named “Beyonce” and put effort into making it look as much like her as possible.
On five of the characters people pretty much ignored me entirely, as usual. But when I played Beyonce people wanted to talk to me all the time. They would constantly invite me to stuff, give me things, name drop me in chat. Just kind of gather around me in town. Even other men who were playing female characters just assumed I was a woman.
I don’t know what it was about that character specifically, but it was a valuable insight into the life of women.
A running joke could be renaming the genders as “solo” and “co-op” for MMOs.
I know what we are doing today, Ferb.
I had an extremely similar experience. It was astonishing how quick people assume you are a woman simply by having decent enough grammar and aren’t a shitty person.
At least in an MMO it’s not dangerous feeling. If anything, it kind of makes it easier to lead groups since you can get people to just do stuff with you. Not great insight into being a women though, people don’t generally accept female leadership irl.
At least in an MMO it’s not dangerous feeling.
This is true, as you are kinda protected by the avatar and screen as layers between you and the others. I’d imagine the fear can definitely seep into gaming as well though, if you start getting harassing private messages and all that
Did anyone study the opposite? I remember reading about a woman that pretended to be a man for a few weeks to write a book about it, and she described it as something like “soul crushingly lonely”.
Norah Vincent. She was particularly beloved by the manosphere because her experience pretending to be a man for 18 months (not just a few weeks) lead to her “conversion” from a feminist to realising that men too have their own problems.
Thought, she personally was already libertarian, and highly critical of trans people, so she reads more like a TERF imo.
Sadly passed away via assisted suicide a few years ago.
Norah Vincent - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Vincent
Which is super ironic, as feminism acknowledges mens issues.
It just doesn’t always feel like it takes them as seriously
Like when? Can you give me an example?
Conscription, parental treatment especially during custody battles are some of the things often talked about where I live. Especially the former one is one of the most blatant examples of men and women being treated differently. But it’s not very high on the agenda for feminist orgs.
What do you think is high in feminist agenda orgs? Because I don’t know what you mean.
You can see the agendas for yourself here for two of the orgs I based this on:
https://naisunioni.fi/polohjelma/
https://www.feministinenpuolue.fi/tavoitteemme/poliittiset-ohjelmat/#yleisohjelma
I don’t know of any studies, but I have heard anecdotes from trans men that say the same thing.
I once read a very well put together comment by a trans man on the subject of their experience with this before and after transitioning, and basically, because men are never supposed to show emotion, their relationships lack a level of emotional intimacy at a fundamental level. They said that their relationships with other men felt hollow and largely superficial.
It’s also why men seemingly mistake friendship from women as flirting so frequently - because women can have a true emotional connection in their friendships with other women, but men can only get that same level of connection in romantic relationships or life or death scenarios such as war. Women also often treat men more coldly than they do other women as a result of this to avoid being mistaken for flirting with every man that they talk to (or because they view men as dangerous).
Half Life 2 graphics for maximum immersion
Welcome to city 17
I mean… I’d feel disgust, anger and fear.
“You. Pick up that can.”
bends over
“Nice!”
*blushes*
Here’s the link to the actual article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-19418-4.pdf
Paper itself above. Need a deeper reading with my notes but on the surface the stats are so-so. They check normality, but don’t confirm linearity (use of pmcc will not be valid without - there are also a few other conditions to check for hypothesis testing with PMCC if memory serves), use of a continuous test (PMCC, ANOVA, unpaired t’s) for discrete (likert) data is also little controversial, but generally condoned.
As for the conclusion, not a psych phd so I’ll assume they know their stuff!
my personal rule of thumb is that if it’s published in Nature, Cell, or another well-regarded journal, the statistical and experimental methodologies are almost certainly solid. Do you think I should adjust that rule going forward?
Honestly, I always poke the stats no matter how good the journal. The best way to read any article is as a skeptic (the onus is on the writer to prove their point), and any small irregularity is something to be queried.
No matter how good the journal, it’s only as good as the reviewers, and reviewers are humans too. Odds are a paper in nature is all above board, but I’m somewhat of a pedant when it comes to checking test conditions.
i do that to, i also try to find most recent research, anything older than 5+years is suspect, because they always come with revised papers in newer studies/research eventually.
In some fields (e.g. mathematics) old papers hold up well. However, in fields like psychology where the landscape shifts a lot that’s probably a good shout!
sometimes, but they have retracted quite a few papers based on misleading papers, or even AI rgenerated. also because it can mislead readers into thinking “oh this is the sole cause and effect” but not potential alternative scenarios.
Thank you!
Similar social experiments include the same fear from being on the receiving end of society when people in real life dressed as Muslims, Jews, homeless people, even as black people (much harder to do). There is such trusism as walking in the shoes of another person. Living as them for a week would be most interesting.
Black Like Me was eye opening for a lot of people. Even John Howard Griffin, who did blackface to understand the black southern experience, and already fought for civil rights, was surprised by how he was treated.
If I remember it right, at the beginning of his journey he had to beg and find help because he was refused service when trying to cash his travellers checks.
Regarding fear, our results show that this emotion is higher in the catcalling situation, however, there is no significant difference with the control condition. This suggests that experiencing an urban underground environment at night from a woman’s perspective is inherently fear-inducing, independent of explicit harassment.
Does it, though? It would be better if they had a control group where participants used a male avatar. My understanding is that both groups used female avatars:
In the experimental condition, the avatars used typical Italian catcalling expressions (documented in newspaper articles and sociological research on the topic of verbal street harassment), while in the control group (condition), the avatars posed general questions to the participants.
I have no doubt that it can be scary for a woman to be in this setting in real life. However, I’d like to see scientific proof that this feeling can be specifically induced in men who are controlling female characters in VR. Right now, it’s more of an assumption, isn’t it? As a gamer, I know that the location itself can be scary, that sound design (music, ambient sounds, voice acting) can be frightening, and that trying VR for the first time can also be uncomfortable.
Why would it be assumption? Then it wouldn’t be a study? They tested for something and got predictable results. Assumption is when you don’t do that.
I’d also be worried about the reaction being tainted by the target not being your desire. Like, I’d imagine a straight dude will be more uncomfortable being catcalled by a dude than a lady (regardless of whether their avatar is a woman or not). Obviously the study is a bit more robust than that, but it’s still an inherent issue hard to circumvent just with VR.
What does that have to do with anything? The only reason I’d be more comfortable with a woman cat-calling me is because I’m significantly bigger than most women and my position in society lends me a lot more power and confidence. Even if a dude did it I’d be way better off than if I were a woman so I can brush it off more easily. I’m also not attracted to every woman I see so what does it matter?
Besides, turn that around and ask yourself if you really think that a straight woman being cat-called by a man makes them feel any better. In fact, maybe the inherent lack of attraction found between a male participant and a male cat-caller actually makes the point that much stronger. “I’m not attracted to this person and yet they continue to pressure me and that makes me feel all the more unsafe”.
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Completely useless, says the random Internet man about a study of random men
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It’s a study, not a solution. The goal wasn’t to change the opinion of catcallers.
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I’m a middle aged Caucasian male. Almost old now. (Is 47 old?) I don’t think the sense of fear is a woman exclusive thing. I fear it’s becoming a “Critical thinker” thing- I’m not without sympathy though.
My county went over 70% to Trump just over a year ago. Even the people smiling or making polite small talk in public are secret fascists, and they’re everywhere. That’s my perspective.
Oh this is such nonsense.
They basically decided “what if we tested a scenario that has been happening in ChatVR for about 10 years.”
When I play a shooting game in VR I don’t think I’m going to die, I do not experience fear. Any claims along those lines are at best overstated and at worst straight up lies.
Also what’s this research supposed to prove anyway?
Perhaps you are a sociopath?
You need to learn what sociopath means.
This is a dumb test. How people react in VR is not relevant to the real world.
Irrelevant is too strong a word given the opportunities in VR for training or even therapy… but you have a point.
Training and therapy absolutely. But this is about empathy, they are claiming the people are more empathetic when they experience a situation in VR than if they haven’t experienced that situation ever in any medium.
I don’t believe they’ve demonstrated that.
At best they’ve demonstrated the people are empathetic but they might be anyway. They definitely haven’t demonstrated that that’s a result of the VR experience. To do that they would have had to have taken some sort of test both before and after the VR experience to see if their attitudes have changed.
Training and therapy are appropriate uses for VR because they don’t need to demonstrate that they are better than real world alternatives, because the benefit they have is cost. They are cheaper in VR than they are in the real world, that’s the only metric they need to pass.
So dumb. They stupidly cited studies about how the same therapy has applied to the real world, and other possible applications. They even had a section about testing embodiment in their VR scenario, talked about neurology, and used multiple metrics to compare the before and after for both groups.
I guess anything can be dumb if you don’t read it.
Talking about neurology doesn’t automatically validate their method though. I’m not an expert in this field but my impression is that the researchers make a lot of assumptions that I’d describe as shortcuts; gloss over the differences that they found between the experimental and control groups; and then reach a lot with their conclusion.
One thing that stands out to me is the identification of feelings of disgust and anger to support that the VR setting can be used to elicit social change. This implies that the participants would not have felt disgust or anger had their avatar been male; or if it was a normal videogame; or if this wasn’t a game at all but a film instead; or if this wasn’t audiovisual but a book instead…
I don’t think they did anything to substantiate that line of thinking, and I’m not convinced by the various psychological scales that they used to support the connection they made. As far as I’m concerned these same men could have responded with disgust just by hearing a retelling of a similar event by a random stranger. The study at least does nothing to lead me to assume otherwise.
The disgust, fear and anger responses are at the core of the argument to support their central thesis that “first-person virtual embodiment of a female target of catcalling is a useful method for eliciting morally salient negative emotions in male participants”. But my understanding of their methodology leaves me unimpressed and unconvinced.
One thing that stands out to me is the identification of feelings of disgust and anger to support that the VR setting can be used to elicit social change. This implies that the participants would not have felt disgust or anger had their avatar been male; or if it was a normal videogame; or if this wasn’t a game at all but a film instead; or if this wasn’t audiovisual but a book instead…
Genuinely, I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion from reading the paper, it’s very much not what the authors say. It never makes the claim that they wouldn’t have also felt that disgust and anger in an altered situation (male avatar etc.), only that there was a difference between the control group and the catcalled group, and that the difference was observable using their novel (and really cool) VR+AI methodology. That’s quite explicitly their entire thesis. They don’t investigate other scenarios, presumably because it was outside the scope of the research.
The conclusion from the paper:
Our study demonstrates that first-person virtual embodiment of a female target of catcalling is a useful method for eliciting morally salient negative emotions in male participants. Our findings indicate that this simulated experience goes beyond mere observation, inducing significant increases in disgust and anger – emotions intrinsically linked to moral evaluation and behavioral change. The study not only validates virtual reality as a tool for perspective-taking, but also introduces a novel computational approach to quantify the nuanced, implicit dimensions of this experience.
Our findings contribute to cognitive and methodological advancements as much as for promoting social safety. Employing virtual embodiment to enhance emotional sensitivity in men holds promise for both clinical and educational applications. In clinical settings, it may serve as an intervention to increase emotional awareness and empathy among individuals who have engaged in harassment, with the aim of modifying their behavior. In educational contexts, VR can be employed to simulate ecological environments that vividly illustrate the negative impact of street harassment, such as catcalling, by enabling participants to directly experience the emotional distress caused by such situations. Unlike real-world harassment, Virtual Reality simulation can be immediately terminated if distress becomes excessive, and it is able to offer embodiment experiences impossible through traditional methods.
They don’t say this can be used to fix catcalling or improve society on it’s own, just that the results seem to indicate there is a basis to believe that VR can elicit varying emotional responses between different scenarios and that we can measure the differences in reaction.
Here’s how I came to that conclusion.
We hypothesize that this embodied experience will elicit morally salient emotions like disgust and anger. By inducing this moral discomfort, the intervention aims to foster self-awareness and encourage a reconsideration of the behavior’s impact, serving as a potential strategy to promote behavioral change.
That’s… the hypothesis.
Why don’t you trust their metrics? If you don’t think the tests were accurate measurements, what would work better?
They used neurolinguistics and neural pathway mapping, there’s a whole section on it.
Testing one thing by no means implies any other method wouldn’t have proven the same thing. That’s… that’s not how studies work. They’re testing the efficacy of their methods.
That’s the hypothesis, not a thesis.
I think that if you say
In clinical settings, it may serve as an intervention to increase emotional awareness and empathy among individuals who have engaged in harassment, with the aim of modifying their behavior.
then you need your metrics to control for, among other things, “individuals who have engaged in harassment”
But they’re not just testing efficacy either. They’re making a qualitative statement that VR has certain special characteristics when it comes to aiding empathy. That’s a claim that absolutely need to be contrasted against other media, and it’s absolutely “how studies work”.
(Edit: Oh.)
That’s a claim that absolutely need to be contrasted against other media
But… why? There’s no reason for them to do that, their goal isn’t comparison with other established methods, simply comparison with itself.
to fight an anecdote with an anecdote - when i play games sure i don’t experience the fear of death, but i do experience compassion towards what i’m fully aware is a bunch of pixels & lines of code presented to me as a character in a video game. and i experience the thrill of discovery or a tough fight with a boss. the more i’m immersed in a game the deeper emotions i feel.
and VR in particular is much more immersive. even in a game like Beatsaber, which doesn’t aim at realism, your brain interprets the boxes coming at you as actual objects about to slam into your face. you intuitively attempt to dodge them, especially when you’re in the flow state of playing.
games can elicit emotions, and VR games can do it in an even stronger way. from my perspective, there is no reason to doubt the results of this study, especially if the fear response wasn’t measured through a subjective report of emotions, but through observing the physiological effects fear has on the body.
the research is supposed to highlight - not prove, there is nothing to prove, it’s a fact - how much fear women and girls go through in their daily lives, that men or boys don’t have to worry about
Ah yes, the ever popular “I’ve never experienced it, so it doesn’t exist” argument.
Where did I make that arguement.
VR is not the real world. It’s not the holiday so you can’t turn off safety protocols to simulate real world threats.
When I play a shooting game in VR I don’t think I’m going to die, I do not experience fear. Any claims along those lines are at best overstated and at worst straight up lies.
Who cares what you experience in the context of this study? Why is your input here useful in the context of the discussion? What does this statement add? Why did you say this? Why would anyone here want to know this?
He assumes that the feelings were not real because he doesn’t have feelings in VR. If true for everybody that would invalidate the results.
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When I play a shooting game in VR I don’t think I’m going to die, I do not experience fear. Any claims along those lines are at best overstated and at worst straight up lies.
Did you forget to read your own comment? Because this is you saying that the study is wrong because of your limited personal experience, which no one cares about.
Your anecdote does not invalidate data
Turn your logic around. If men feel the fear when it is just a simulation then real life for women is much worse.
