1. Virtual Worlds, Real Peace: Can Virtual Worlds Facilitate Conflict Resolution? Doron Friedman, Sammy Ofer School of Communications, The Interdisciplinary Center

2. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Acknowledgements Sharon Joffe, IDC Tsahi Hayat, IDC EU Project – Presenccia UNLV-IDC Project

3. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Agenda Virtual reality and virtual worlds Scientific research of human behavior in virtual environments Some proposals for conflict resolution using virtual worlds

4. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Peace..?

5. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Contact Hypothesis Contact under certain conditions, such as equal status, cooperation towards a superordinate goal, and institutional support, will create a positive intergroup encounter, which, in turn, will bring about an improvement in intergroup relations.

6. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC contact mediated ?

7. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Indirect mediated contact?

8. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC “6-degrees of separation”

9. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC But what is the quality of mediated contacts?

10. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC The mediated contact hypothesis? Under conditions C 1,C 2,C 3,… contact among rival groups can reduce hostility (as measured by M 1,M 2,…) by a factor of X Under conditions C 1,C 2,C 3,… mediated contact among rival groups can reduce hostility (as measured by M 1,M 2,…) by a factor of X’ What is the relation between X and X’? How can we make X’=X or even X’>X?

11. Advanced Virtuality Lab Research themes: virtual reality, virtual worlds, neuro-physiological interfaces http://www.idc.ac.il/communications/avl/

12. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC

22. Highly-Immersive Virtual Reality (10 years ago)

23. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC

24. Some Presence Definitions ‘The sense of “being there”’ (Held & Durlach, Sheridan, Zeltzer: premier issue of PRESENCE, 1992) ‘A perceptual illusion of nonmediation’ (Lombard and Ditton, 1997)

25. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Presencia EU Project (2003-2006) UCL CS UCL ION g.Tec, Austria TUG Graz Austria UMH, Spain Technion, Israel

26. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Presence – our defintion Successful substitution of real sense data by computer-generated sense data ‘Successful’ – response is similar to expected response in reality ‘Response’ – –Low level physiological  high level cognitive and emotional –Includes verbal responses about ‘being there’ –Response includes potential for interaction

27. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Social Presence, Co-Presence

28. Is there a sense of presence in online virtual worlds (such as Second Life)?

29. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Our SL Bots Version 1.0 Implemented in LSL Wander around (walking) and look for avatars Collect information about the avatars they meet (e.g., age, proximity, name) Interact with avatars –Animations (50, however..) –Greeting –Spatial behavior

30. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Hall: Proxemics (1960s) 1.Intimate space - < 1.5 feet 2.Personal space 1.5-4 feet 3.Social space4-12 feet 4.Public space> 12 feet

31. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC

33. Proxemics of interacting avatars

34. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Non-interacting couples

35. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Spatial response: An automated experiment Is there an equivalent for a posture shift in SL?

36. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Method Bot looked for avatars alone, stood 4 meters from them, greeted them, waited 2 seconds, and moved to a distance of 1.2 meters Observed whether they move within 10 seconds Automated experiment However: needs manual supervision

37. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Results “subjects”minutesobserved baseline4917265 experiment284:40121.76

38. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC The online-behavior spectrum hypothesis

39. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Virtual Peace: Some suggestions Tele-socialization of physically remote people Co-located virtual studio Inducing empathy

40. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Virtual Group Discussion Experiment: comparing face-to-face discussions (of global warming) with a similar discussion in a virtual world Preliminary results… With Tomer Hendl, Amit Lavie-Dinur, and Yuval Karniel

41. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Communication Issues Synchronous vs Async. –Pace is important; timely responses are important for empathy Video conference vs. VR/VE –Sense of spatial presence –VR can preserve anonymity

43. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Empathy Empathy (Levenson & Ruef, 1992): “knowing what another person is feeling, feeling what another person is feeling and responding compassionately to another person” I am talking about something else, like suspension of disbelief, or presence.. Note the definition above has cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects. There are some anecdotal studies of empathy in online “communities”

44. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Online studies of empathy, some results (Preece, 1999, review) Empathy is common online and in many communities, particularly support communities Women’s communication is typically high in empathy and low in factual content, whereas for men it is the opposite These are all asynchronous communities

45. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Perspective taking Perspective taking, as measured by an individual- difference questionnaire, has been shown to be correlated with offering greater assistance to the target (e.g., Batson 1991) The fundamental attribution error (Jones and Nisbet, 1971) leads us to consider more situational factors when judging ourselves and more dispositional factors when judging others Perspective taking leads to make situational rather dispositional attributions (Regan and Totten, 1975)

46. Communication Across Borders, July 08, IDC Perspective taking in action Galinksy and Moskowitz (2000) asked subjects to imagine the everyday life of an elderly person; this resulted in more positive attitudes towards that social group Yee and Bailenson (2006) allowed participants in an immersive VR setting to vew themselves in a virtual mirror. Negative stereotyping of the elderly was significantly reduced when participants had elderly avatars, as compared with young avatars.