Towards More Child Safety-Oriented Decisions Through VR

Witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) could have long-term negative impacts on children. Such exposure is, however, often overlooked by professionals. We developed a VR scenario which allowed participants to witness IPV from a child's perspective. In this pilot study, we found that they made more child-protective decisions and showed higher levels of empathy towards the child after VR exposure. When comparing the impact between the child's perspective and third-person perspective, no statistically significant differences were found in empathy and decision-making, even though those with the child's perspective had significantly higher levels of presence.