Men who embodied female avatars via virtual reality didn鈥檛 respond well to being catcalled, raising hopes that this approach could make perpetrators more aware of the effects of such harassment.
at the University of Bologna in Italy and her colleagues wanted to know how men would react to experiencing catcalling, so they had 36 men, average age 23, embody a female avatar getting ready to go to a party, before entering an underground station.
For half of them, male avatars catcalled them with phrases like 鈥淗ey, why don鈥檛 you give me a nice smile?鈥� and 鈥淲ow, are you real?鈥�. The remaining men experienced male avatars asking them more general questions, such as for the time or directions to a bathroom.
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The researchers found that the participants who experienced catcalling felt significantly more anger and disgust than the other group, assessed via an emotion-ranking scale.
鈥淭his is important because these emotions are related to moral disapproval,鈥� says Lucifora. The men were all screened beforehand to be confident that they had never been perpetrators of catcalling, so the findings may not be generalisable to people who make such comments, she says. The team also didn鈥檛 compare the men鈥檚 attitudes to catcalling before and after the experiment to see if they changed.
However, anger and disgust are 鈥減otential motivators for self-reflection and corrective action鈥�, according to the researchers.
Just one of the 18 men in the catcalled group spoke to the male avatars, showing aggression. One of the participants said: 鈥淚 moved away because I was [embodying] a woman; if I had been a man, I would have responded.鈥� In the control group, nine men responded to the avatars鈥� questions.
There was no significant difference in feeling fear between the two groups. This may be because being a woman in an underground environment at night is intimidating by itself, says Lucifora.
Experiments like this may be one of the most realistic ways men can experience catcalling, says , a former academic whose PhD at Illinois State University was on catcalling. 鈥淰irtual reality could be a good way to get that experience without bringing forth whatever that situation in the real world could result in,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here is always fear around not knowing what the other person is going to do.鈥�
PsyArXiv
