CAREER: Virtual Body Ownership Illusions for Bias Reduction and Fostering Inclusivity in STEM Classrooms

Davidson College, Davidson NC

Investigators

Abstract

There exist numerous well-known negative stereotypes that are prevalent in society, including those about age and technical ability, gender and mathematical ability, and race and intelligence. These stereotypes are so prevalent that simply reminding someone about their age, gender, or race can negatively affect performance on a challenging exam. Such negative stereotypes about mental aptitude have been linked to the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Further, this underrepresentation and lack of diversity in people working with technology has been shown to limit innovation and creativity in technological fields. This project will investigate novel uses of virtual reality technology to combat the negative effects of stereotypes about women and underrepresented minorities that currently deter them from participating in STEM disciplines. Virtual reality technology enables its users to see the world through the eyes of, and take on certain behavioral characteristics of, someone else. This project will advance the understanding of the effects of virtual reality by investigating its ability to buffer people from negative stereotypes by briefly taking on the characteristics of someone else. This virtual perspective change is expected to limit the negative effects of stereotype threat that deter students from underrepresented groups from majoring in STEM disciplines, and therefore increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines. This project integrates research and education initiatives investigating the effects of virtual avatars on reducing the negative effects of stereotypes and biases in the classroom. The project will 1) demonstrate that avatars can positively mediate implicit behavior in ways that affect attitudinal changes lasting outside of virtual environments, 2) formulate a protocol for inducing lasting behavioral changes based on different hardware specifications, 3) produce a novel methodology for personalizing avatar and environment specifications given an individual's unique characteristics, and 4) deploy curriculum guidelines for the integration of virtual reality technology applications into classrooms to positively affect group behavior and increase retention for underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines. Personalized virtual experiences, along with curricular guidelines for deployment, will be generated and evaluated through data collected from a multi-institutional experiment in introductory computer science courses at three different institutions: a private liberal arts college, a public state university, and a community college. The results of this multi-institutional experiment will be used to assess and demonstrate virtual reality’s potential to mediate negative effects caused by stereotype threat and implicit bias. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.