People in poverty are often being stigmatized as being unmotivated, dumb and lazy. While in reality, situational factors – such as sickness, divorce, or loss – often play a large role in having a poor financial situation. The bias surrounding people in poverty is not only prevalent in lay people, but also in professionals, like policy makers. This is particularly problematic, as they put policies, systems and procedures in place that are responsible for helping the same people that are stereotyped: people in vulnerable financial positions.
Perhaps this is no surprise: not knowing what it means to live in poverty makes it difficult to make decisions that are not prejudiced, because it is hard to imagine and understand the complexity and stress the situation causes. To create societal understanding for this societal problem, one needs to be informed. Numbers then hardly speak to the imagination, and neither do texts describing the situation of poverty. Instead, experiencing poverty may trigger more understanding and sympathy. And that is exactly what we try to achieve with this project: we are developing a VR experience, that places you in the shoes of a family that is facing financial stress and difficulties. Our goal is to increase understanding of the effects of financial stress and, in turn, foster greater empathy for people living in poverty.
What are we doing?
We are creating a realistic VR experience, in collaboration with Nibud and people that actually experienced poverty. As this project is part of the ELSA-lab, we are constantly incorporating the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects in the development of the VR. In addition, we are investigating the effects of the VR experience on empathy, attitudes towards poverty, and pro-social behaviour. These studies are part of Stefan Bos’ PhD research.
