AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Prosocial behaviour-promoting virtual reality (PBP-VR) experiences often claim to foster empathy and understanding by allowing users to virtually embody members of marginalised groups. In this talk, I argue that PBP-VR can also produce distinctive epistemic errors that generate morally problematic forms of social understanding. I identify and analyse two such errors: synecdoche epistemic arrogance, in which users mistake a narrow or artificial virtual experience for genuine insight into the experiences of marginalised people more broadly, and epistemic overestimation, in which users significantly overestimate the depth or reliability of the understanding they have acquired through virtual embodiment.
I argue that these errors are morally significant because they can encourage misplaced epistemic confidence, diminish appropriate deference to lived testimony, and reinforce distorted beliefs about oppression and social identity. Moreover, PBP-VR may sometimes unintentionally lead users to misinterpret emotionally salient virtual experiences as morally enlightening, even where those experiences are highly artificial, and or, affectively misleading (think, for example, a man embodied as a woman who concludes that being sexually harassed is 'fun' and therefore 'not that bad').
The talk concludes by considering how these risks complicate common claims about VR as an “empathy machine” and by outlining several ethical implications for the design and implementation of PBP-VR systems.