The young man alone enters a lively, dimly lit pub in Amsterdam to wait for friends to arrive. In the background, a weak dance rhythm sounds. A drunken man approaches the bar and disgustingly orders drinks. He continues to mock a novice, grunts in his face and barks: “What? I am pestering you or what?”
On Virtual reality headset (VR) Where this scene is played out, the question is imposed on the screen: “What do you feel at this moment?” The carrier of the headsetWhich observes this scene from the point of view of a novice, can then move his eyes to evaluate the level of disgust, anger, irritation, fear, excitement and other emotions on the scale from one “not at all” to seven “very strong”.
“This exercise is part of a study designed to decipher how emotions affect criminal behavior – a field of research that has not been sufficiently studied in criminology,” says Shaina Herman, criminologist from the Max Institute for the study of crime, security and law in Freiburg, Germany. “We use the technology of virtual reality, with the help of which we can provide the participants with an exciting possibility of committing a crime. The goal is to manipulate them in real time,” Herman commented on a session on the decision in crime and justice on February 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Development of Science (AAAS) in Denver Colorado. The simulation is designed to study how a person decides to respond – say, commit a crime or intervene in order to stop one – when you come across an emotionally tense situation.
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Herman’s work could help explain why people commit crimes in the midst – such as murder of a second degree, attack, domestic violence and some types of theft. This shows that the virtual environment can powerfully cause certain emotions, such as anger or excitement, and this is a step towards determining how these emotions affect the readiness to commit a criminal act, for example, to begin a fight in a bar. The study of Herman is planned to be published in the next issue of the magazine. Journal of experimental criminology.
Emotions caused by unforeseen circumstances can distort the rational calculation by a person of the value of his actions (which may include, say, shame or assessment of the chances of being caught) compared to the benefits of crime. They can help explain the fact that people who, by virtue of their personality, seem extremely unlikely to commit a crime, are actually capable of time from time to time. “Sometimes people can be very moral or possess all these prosocial personality characteristics, and yet they will commit a crime,” says German. “Emotions can explain why this is so.”
The new work suggests that virtual reality can help to figure out how emotions affect decision -making that can lead to a criminal act. Criminologists cannot, from an ethical point of view, conduct field experiments to study this issue. “I can’t ask a participant in the study to commit a crime, and then, while he is committing a crime, to interview him about how he perceives the situation. [and his] Emotions, ”said Herman.
The forensics used written vignettes to place people in the scene, but such descriptions cannot convey subtle non-verbal signals-a rough gesture of hand or icy look-which can scare away someone in real life. “Reading the description of the situation does not necessarily seem real in life,” says Jessica Demisers, a criminologist from the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who did not participate in a new study. Another problem, according to Daitzer, is that written vignettes leave many details to the imagination, which leads to differences between objects. According to her, the VR approach helps to solve both problems. “This is very exciting, and you can imagine that you are in such a situation. And it leaves nothing about the context of the will,” she says.
The criminologist Max Plank Jean-Louis Van Gelder, who several years ago became a pioneer in the use of virtual reality in criminology, instructed Herman and her husband, the criminalist Timothy Barnum, create films about bar scenes in order to demonstrate the usefulness of technology in a controlled experiment. Herman and Barnum chose producers, directors and actors and at the end of 2021 went to Amsterdam for three days of filming. They invited German actors and filled the crowded bar with the Dutch statists. After the films were shot, the researchers scored for their experiment more than 100 men aged 18 to 30 years from bars, restaurants and universities in Freiburg.
The participants watched one of the three films shot with a 360-degree image and sound. Some of them watched a video with a disgusting drunken man who was supposed to cause anger and irritation. Others had meetings designed to cause sexual excitement or excitement. It depicted a woman who went to the bar, looked into the eyes of the participant, coquettishly gestured to him, and then ordered for him a beer, which she asked the bartender to withdraw from her account. The third group observed a scene in which nothing remarkable happened.
Researchers found that virtual scenes cause expected emotions – anger or excitement – based on the assessments of the participants before and after diving in the video. The video “Anger” and “excitement” also caused stronger emotions of a given type than neutral video. According to Herman, the effect was huge and specific. “We can not only use the virtual reality to change current emotions, but in fact we can determine what emotions we are trying to achieve,” she says. As part of the study, monitoring equipment recorded physiological reactions, such as a rapid heartbeat, which often accompany increased emotions.
Herman and her colleagues also collected data that has yet to be analyzed about how anger or excitement affects the decision to start a fight, intervene in it or put an end to sexual harassment. In this part of the study, the participants responded to additional personnel. In the script of anger, a drunken visitor entered into a fight with another man. Then he slowly returned to the bar, grabbed the participant’s beer and took a sip, looking at him. In an episode of excitement, the participants watched as the visitor aggressively attacked a woman from the previous video, who was clearly upset, blocking her path back to the table.
Researchers asked the participants questions about how these scenes and accompanying emotions affect cognitive factors, which, as you know, affect the decision on whether it is worth committing a crime. These factors include the perception of the risk of arrest, the morality of aggressive or criminal action, as well as the social benefits or risks of such actions. For example, a child may think that the commission of a crime makes him look cool (social reward), but an adult may be concerned about how such behavior may look in the eyes of others. “We want to understand how these emotional states change how people perceive these knowledge, change how they see risk. [and] Change the decision -making method, ”says German.
The work of Herman is part of a wider direction in criminology, which is trying to use the principles of the behavioral economy to cope with irrational factors when making decisions in the context of crimes, said Greg Pogarski, a criminologist from the University of Olbani and a former public defender, who also performed at the AAAS session on crime. “We use intuition, emotions and other intuitive environmental signals, and they actually affect our judgments,” he said in his speech. For example, when people feel good from any activity, they tend to overestimate its advantages and underestimate potential consequences, he says.
According to Podarsky, one of the intuitive factors that plays a role in erroneous shooting by the police is “preparation” – in this case the dispatcher. “It turns out that the information transmitted by the dispatcher can affect the probability of a mistaken shot of police officers,” Parsky said at a meeting. If the dispatcher pronounces the word “pistol” when describing the scene, the officer arrived to help is predisposed or “tuned” to see a gun, even if the suspect pulls out a wallet or a mobile phone out of his pocket. In one study, which used the simulated environment, different from virtual reality, when the dispatcher said that the attacker had a “gun”, the probability of erroneous shooting is doubled Compared to cases when the dispatcher did not say that the subject has a gun, said Parsky.
VR may be part of a solution in such situations, suggested Herman. According to her, this technology can be used to model hot scenarios and give officers the opportunity to work out their actions. Similarly, virtual simulations of stress cross -examinations in the courtroom can help prepare victims of crimes or other witnesses for testimony.
Bar scenes recorded in German were duplicated into English, Dutch and French, and German and her colleagues plan to make them widely accessible to researchers. Episodes can be in demand: at the meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November last year, the researchers stood in line to experience an exciting effect, Daitzer says. New results also emphasize the usefulness of virtual reality for understanding crime, inspiring Ditzer, for example, to consider using it to study how adolescents make decisions on committing crimes. “I think that in the future we will see more of this,” she says.
