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The Identification and Alleviation of Biases Using Virtual Humans
Using the Interpersonal Simulator my colleagues and I have investigated the effect of skin-tone on interactions with virtual humans. We recently published our first paper at the conference Intelligent Virtual Agents. It is the first in a series of explorations of whether the
virtual world elicits bias in health profession students, as does the real world [Cohen 2002]. It
is our hope that these studies (conducted over the next
4 years) will eventually help educators curricularly address bias in
health profession students. Currently, there are only limited tools
to help identify and then mitigate bias. Virtual patients would be a
powerful addition to the educators arsenal, and we would all
agree that providing such tools would only improve patient outcomes.
After we have further established the correspondence of biases in the real world to virtual world biases, we will examine if extensive exposure to dark-skinned virtual humans has a mitigating effect on racial bias. We believe that Virtual Humans could be used to effectively "train out" biases; repeated exposure to a subject of bias has been shown to create a favorable effect on racially biased behavior [Plant 2005]. It may be that virtual humans can be used to promote a similar positive effect.
With respects to the study reported in the below articles, what was present
in the limited space was a condensation of a larger, ongoing study.
In these studies, we did not limit who could participate in the study. However, to properly
statistically analyze the results we only ran the statistics on a
homogenous subgroup (caucasian students) which were also logistically
our largest group (by a 4:1 margin, it would have been hard to get
enough for any other subgroup until we are done running this work for
over 4 years) and increase the power of the results. As the work shows
that the virtual world appears to correlate with the real world in
eliciting bias in this one population, we would expect to see other real
world groups express similar correspondences in the virtual world. This
is all a part of upcoming research.
Listen to the NPR Broadcast on WUFT 89.1 by pressing Play below
Read the CNN Article Here
Read the UF News Article Here
Read the Alligator Article Here
Read the Gainesville Sun Article Here
Read the Research Paper Here