Shaping negative attitudes toward mafias through immersive virtual reality

Abstract Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) can transport people to new, artificially generated environments and situations that are otherwise difficult to reproduce due to logistical and ethical constraints. Crucially, IVR has proven extremely effective in shaping attitudes and promoting desirable outcomes. Leveraging this feature, we utilized IVR to counteract the influence of mafias, one of the most detrimental phenomena in our society, by strengthening participants’ opposing attitudes and exploring their behavioral intentions. In a between-subject design study, 100 participants were exposed to either a scenario depicting typical mafia-related activities (experimental condition) or a scenario showing non-mafia-related crime (control condition). We recorded participants’ explicit and implicit attitudes one week before and immediately after the IVR exposure. Explicit attitudes were measured using the Attitudes towards Italian Mafias Scale, implicit attitudes with an ad-hoc Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), and behavioral intentions by asking participants whether they would intervene, report, and testify against the crime witnessed in the virtual scenario. Participants in the experimental condition displayed more negative explicit attitudes towards mafias after experiencing the virtual scenario. However, they were also less certain about testifying against the crime, reflecting the well-known phenomenon of omertà, or the law of silence. Our findings confirm IVR as a valuable tool for changing attitudes by providing experiences that individuals might not otherwise encounter. This paves the way for exploring more sophisticated strategies to encourage individual and collective anti-mafia actions.