Virtual Body Swapping May Help Eradicate Racism

Racism and gender discrimination can be sorted out through body swapping, suggest researchers. This new technological innovation can help people change attitudes towards others and reduce biases.

Virtual Body Swapping:

Researchers have created a new way of making the whites feel that they are dwelling in black bodies and adults are made to feel that they had children's bodies. This has been made possible by the brains ability to bring information together and here bodily illusions also contribute to the thinking. Such experiments show remarkable results. Individuals are exposed to body entirely different from theirs with respect to age, gender and race. Researchers found that the experiment reduces bias against black people.

Researchers Say:

Adults who were virtually given child bodies felt childlike. "The research shows that integration of different sensory signals can allow the brain to update its model of the body and cause people to change their attitudes about others," said professor Mel Slater from University College London in Britain. "Our findings are important as they motivate a new research area into how self-identity is constructed and how the boundaries between 'ingroups' and 'outgroups' might be altered," professor Manos Tsakiris of the Royal Holloway University of London added.