Does the Proteus Effect with Elderly Simulation Kit Improve Empathy Enhancement to the Elderly?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to construct an experience system using an elderly avatar that produces the Proteus effect, which promotes empathy for the elderly and to evaluate whether the system can improve empathy for the elderly compared to conventional methods. In this experiment, the following three conditions were evaluated for the between-participants experiment: (1) young avatars and a kit for simulating the elderly, (2) elderly avatars and no kit for simulating the elderly, and (3) elderly avatars and a kit for simulating the elderly. The participants were asked to answer a questionnaire to measure their empathy for the elderly and evaluate the difficulty of their movements, which was used in the conventional simulated experience of the elderly, before moving on to the experiment in the virtual space. In the virtual space, it was confirmed that the participants’ movements matched those of the avatar and asked them to perform the task for 20 min to generate sense of embodiment. The results showed no change in empathy toward the elderly in the condition using the conventional experience kit. However, empathy toward the elderly increased significantly using the elderly avatar and no experience kit. In conclusion, it was revealed that the simulated experience of the elderly using the Proteus effect proposed in this study may be sufficiently valuable in terms of effectiveness. However, for the system to be used in various fields, there is still room for improvement, such as understanding the decline of physical functions and reproducing the vision of cataract patients using VR.