The young man enters a crowded, illuminated bar in Amsterdam alone to wait for friends to arrive. A pale dance pulse plays in the background. A drunken man approaches the bar and asks for drinks in a loud and hateful way. It is prescribed to heat the newcomer, fearing in the face and beard, “What? Do I press you or what?”
On a Virtual reality headphone (VR) Where is this scene running, a question is installed on the screen: “How do you feel at this moment?” the HeadphonesThose who watch the scene from the point of view of the newcomer, can change their eyes to assess the level of disgust, anger, discomfort, fear, excitement and other emotions using a scale of one of them, “not at all” seven, “a lot”.
This exercise is part of a study designed to decode how emotions affect criminal behavior. “We use virtual reality technology where we can put the participants in the opportunity of an overwhelming crime. Hermann commented in a session on decision -making and justice on February 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Scientific Progress (AAAS) in Denver, Colo, simulation” the goal of manipulating their feelings in The actual time.
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Hermann’s action can help explain the reason for people commit crimes at the heat of the moment-such as second degree killing, assault, home abuse and some types of theft. It explains that virtual environments can stimulate specific emotions such as anger or excitement, a step towards determining how these feelings affect the individual’s willingness to perform a criminal act, such as starting the fighting in a bar. Hermann’s research is scheduled to appear in a number of coming from Experimental Criminology Magazine.
Emotions launched by unexpected conditions can distort the rational person’s account of the cost of his actions – which can involve shame, or appreciation for the chances of arrest – in exchange for the benefits of crime. They may help calculate the fact that people who seem to be, based on their personality, are unlikely to commit a crime who are able to do so in reality. “Sometimes people can be very moral or have all these social characteristics, however they will commit a crime,” says Hermann. “Emotions can explain the cause of this.”
This new action suggests that VR may help address how emotion affects decisions that may lead to a criminal act. Criminists cannot conduct ethical field experiments to study this question. “I cannot ask the study participant to commit a crime, and after that, while he commits the crime, an interview with him on how to realize the situation [and his] Hermann said, “Emotions.”
Criminists used short articles written to put people in a scene, but such descriptions cannot transmit hidden non -verbal signals – a rude manual gesture or ice staring – you can put someone in real life. “Do not necessarily feel life in life to read a description of a situation,” says Jessica Ditzer, a criminal at the University of Nebraska Omaha, who did not participate in the new research. Another problem, as DeitZer says, is that the written short articles leave a lot of details to the imagination, which provides the contrast between topics. She says VR approach helps solve both problems. It is very immersive, and you can imagine to be in this position. “Do not leave things about context to chance,” she says.
Crime scientist Max Planck Jean -Louis Van Gilder, who was a pioneer in the use of virtual reality in criminology a few years ago, assigned Hermann and her husband, criminality world Timothy Barnum, with the creation of scene films for bar to show the benefit of technology in a controlled experience. Hermann and Barnum lined up the producers, directors and actors, and in late 2021, they traveled to Amsterdam for three days of filming. Bring German actors and filled a packed strip with Dutch additions. Once the films are produced, the researchers recruited more than 100 men between the ages of 18 and 30 years of bars, restaurants and universities in Freiburg to try them.
The participants watched one of the three films filmed with a 360 -degree image. Some of them watched the video that the hateful man appeared drunk, and who was supposed to stimulate anger and discomfort. Others were a designer to derive sexual arousal or excitement. A woman who walked to the bar appeared, called the eye with the participant, met him in a spinning way, then asked for a beer, who asked the waiter to charge the tab. I watched a third group a scene where nothing happened.
The researchers found that virtual scenes highlight the expected emotions – or excitement – on the classification of participants before and after indulging in the videos. Video clips “Anger” and “The Thriller” also produced the most powerful feelings of the intended type of the neutral video. Hermann says the effects were huge. “We can not only use virtual reality to change regular emotions, but we can actually target the emotions we are trying to get,” she says. As part of the study, the monitoring of equipment seized physiological responses, such as a high heart rate, which is often accompanied by increased feelings.
Hermann and her colleagues also collected data, which has not yet been analyzed, on how anger or excitement affects the decision to start a fight, interfere in one or to put an end to sexual harassment. For this part of the study, the participants responded to additional footage. In the scenario of anger, the drunk shepherd got a payment match with another man. Then he returned to the bar, grabbed the beer of the participant and took Suwaj while he was screaming. In the excitement episode, the participants watched a sponsor strongly over the woman from the previous video, who became clearly annoyed because he prevented her way to her table.
The researchers asked the participants questions about how these scenes, and their accompanying emotions affect the cognitive factors known to the impact of decisions regarding a crime. These factors include a visualization of the risks of arrest, moral or criminal act, social benefits, or the risks of this procedure. For example, the child may think that committing a crime that makes them look great – a social bonus – but the adult may be concerned about how such behavior appears to others. “What we want to understand is how these emotional states change the way people look at this perception, and change the way they see the risks [and] Hermann says: “Changing the way they make the decisions,” says Hermann.
Greg Bogski, the crime scientist in Albani and the former audience in making decisions in the context of crimes, said Hermann’s work is part of the broader trend in criminality that is trying to use the principles of behavioral economy to deal with irrational factors in making decisions in the context of crimes. Defender, who also spoke in the AAAS session on the crime. He said in his speech: “We use intuition, emotions and other visceral sermon in the environment, and it actually affects our rulings.” For example, when people feel satisfied with the activity, they tend to overestimate its benefits and reduce the possible consequences, he says.
Bougarski, one of the intuitive factors that play a role in shooting at the wrong police, said in this case, by a sender. “It turns out that the information transmitted by the sender can affect the possibility of a wrong shooting of the police,” Boujarski said at the meeting. If one of the messengers is pronounced with the word “gun” in describing the scene, then the respondent officer is prepared or “prepared” to see a gun, even if the suspect out of his pocket is a wallet or a cell phone. In one of the studies that included a simulating environment that was not VR, when the sender said the attacker had a “weapon”, Wrong shooting chances doubled Bogski said that the cases in which the sender did not say that the issue has a weapon.
Hermann suggested that virtual reality can be part of the solution in such cases. She said this technology can be used to simulate hot scenarios and enable officers to exercise their response. Likewise, the virtual simulation of stressful interrogation in the courtroom can help prepare crime victims or other witnesses to take the situation.
The scene clips, which are in German, have been named to English, Dutch and French, and Hermann and her colleagues are planning to make them widely available to researchers. The episodes may be required: at the American Society for Crime Association last November, researchers waited for a row to experience overwhelming work. The new results also confirm VR benefit to understand the crime, the DeitZer inspiration, on one, to consider its use to investigate how teenagers make decisions about crimes. “I think we will see more of it in the future,” she says.