Virtual Reality Prevention of Gender-Violence in Europe based on Neuroscience of Embodiment, peRspective and Empathy

ended

The aim of VR Per GENERE is to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) through the deployment of cost-effective prevention and rehabilitation tools. The project is achievable based on the expertise of the consortium in this area and existing collaborations with stakeholders. There are three main objectives for which we use virtual reality (VR) scenarios: (i) To induce behavioural and attitudinal changes in the general public with respect to IPV by raising awareness, enhancing empathy for victims and fostering helpful behaviour in bystanders to IPV incidents. (ii) To promote healthy dating relationships by empowering young women to respond assertively to psychological abuse, minimizing the chances of harmful outcomes and the likelihood of men abusing. (iii) To reduce recidivism in IPV offenders. This work is made feasible by the low-cost but high-quality hardware available for VR. To address these objectives, 750 members of the general public and 200 IPV offenders from Spain and Finland will be immersed in VR where they will experience IPV scenes directed at them in the role of victim or bystander. This work will be performed across five different activities and our project will result in an improvement in outcomes relative to IPV, initially in Spain and Finland, and later in Europe. We contribute to improving tools and professional practices in the domain of prevention of IPV and rehabilitation of offenders. We will develop and validate four new interactive VR scenes and five 360° VR scenes, each addressing a specific objective. We will produce two reports of the results obtained in our studies, one prevention protocol for universities and one guideline document for professionals who work with offenders. We will organize two training and two advocacy meetings to communicate and advocate for institutionalization of the use of VR for rehabilitation. We will organize five workshops across Europe, addressing 450 professionals each to disseminate our findings.