Collective psychological ownership in virtual reality: implications for intergroup prejudice

Virtual reality (VR) offers unique opportunities for examining intergroup interactions. Even though VR-based intergroup contact has been seen as promising in reducing prejudice, researchers have faced significant challenges to deliver effective virtual contact interventions and called for better understanding of VR-specific identity-related processes that are present during and facilitate the social interactions in VR. This is a follow-up study on the virtual intergroup contact intervention conducted among 132 White Italian adult participants. The intervention failed to obtain virtual intergroup contact effects on explicit prejudice and showed only a marginal improvement in implicit intergroup bias towards people of African descent following cooperative intergroup contact with a Black avatar. Critical factors contributing to decreasing prejudice in VR were co-presence, body ownership and common cyber identity. In this follow-up study, we examine an additional mechanism that may influence intergroup outcomes in VR contact: the experience of Collective Psychological Ownership of a Virtual Space (CPO-VS). Particularly, we examine the effect of CPO-VS on explicit and implicit attitudes toward people of African ethnic descent following cooperative intergroup contact with an avatar representing a Black person. Results showed that higher perceived CPO-VS was associated with more favorable explicit attitudes toward outgroup members following VR experience across conditions, but it did not moderate the effect of contact on outgroup attitudes. These findings suggest that fostering collective psychological ownership in shared virtual spaces may improve intergroup relations.