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Study of men who embodied a young woman in VR finds they felt disgust & anger when catcalled
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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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