“A more authentic learning experience”: Stanford research finds VR training can help build empathy in the workplace
Imagine you’re a manager and need to have a conversation with an under-performing employee. You want to give them productive and respectful feedback, and know they are dealing with some personal issues that have been impacting their work. How would you talk to them in a compassionate but honest way?
A new study by researchers at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning explores how virtual reality (VR) can help managers develop empathetic communication skills.
While it is commonly believed that empathy is an inherent trait, research shows that it is teachable. “Building empathetic leadership is a complex but learnable skill,” said Candace Thille, faculty director of the Adult and Workforce Learning initiative and a co-author of the study. “While some people might have stronger abilities in that space, anyone can learn to be an empathetic leader. But we need to understand what kinds of support and learning environments are most effective.”
Developing the empathetic leadership skills of managers has benefits for both employees and workplaces. Supportive managers help employees to contribute meaningfully, facilitate their ongoing growth and development, and make them feel valued. Effective managers create a more welcoming and productive environment at the organization and improve talent retention.
“Having a leader that can communicate on all levels and authentically see the employee as a whole person satisfies multiple needs,” said Thille.
At the time the research began, Thille was on leave from Stanford and working in manager development for a large global corporation. The company had 1.6 million employees spread across the globe, with thousands of new managers who had been promoted due to their technical skills and needed support in becoming effective leaders. Using traditional modes of learning in a classroom setting was unfeasible at scale, due to the time availability and global dispersion of the team. Doing self-paced, computer based training, though, would not be effective at developing interpersonal skills. Using VR emerged as a promising solution.
“Our study is novel in investigating how VR can be used specifically for workforce training on empathetic communication skills,” said Anna Queiroz, a former postdoctoral researcher at the Accelerator and lead author of the study. “We decided to use VR because participants can feel in the virtual environment – it can help trigger more emotions and bring them a more authentic learning experience.”
Getting feedback – from yourself
Participants in the study, which included university students, staff, and faculty, embodied a manager in VR and engaged in a performance review with a simulated, pre-recorded employee. They were prompted to give critical feedback to the avatar employee as their voice and body movements were recorded.
Each participant completed one of three study conditions. In the first condition, they had the conversation twice in a row, to see if having a chance to practice would influence their approach. In the second condition, the participant switched places after the first conversation, viewing the scene from the perspective of the employee. They received the communication (both audio and body language) exactly as they had recorded it as the manager, before repeating it from the perspective of the manager again. In the third condition, the participant received feedback on their approach to the conversation while reviewing their interaction.
The researchers collected data on measures related to empathetic communication skills using pre-and post-intervention surveys. The post-test survey included writing an email to the employee, which was then analyzed for empathetic markers. The researchers also analyzed the recordings of the conversation using natural language processing to see how the participants’ language changed over the course of the intervention.
The study found that using VR to practice and repeat the conversation increased the participant’s expression of understanding for the employee’s situation and the expression of emotions. Their language style changed over the course of the intervention, using more first-person pronouns “I” and “we” and words that express emotion. The researchers said this suggests VR is a promising way to give large numbers of employees an authentic learning experience that helps them develop these essential skills.
Understanding how workers learn
Thille and Queiroz are thinking of ways to expand the study, such as using generative AI prompts rather than pre-recorded ones to create a more natural interaction, and conducting studies in real workplace settings with Stanford Accelerator for Learning collaborating organizations. Thille also suggests a future study to test the impact of spaced practice, where participants do their second round of the intervention a day later, giving them time to reflect and internalize their learnings.
As is, though, the study has crucial implications for how to train managers more effectively.
“Having the opportunity to review one’s own performance and receive feedback actually changed how people speak within a ten-minute intervention,” said Queiroz, now an associate professor of communication at the University of Miami. “Imagine if we did that in a more structured way and measured the long-term results?”
Thille sees the study as reflective of the approach of the Adult and Workforce Learning initiative more generally.
“This study is a perfect example of the kind of work we're doing at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. It combines a real-world problem that we're trying to address with making progress on our fundamental understanding of how human learning occurs.”
Additional study co-authors include Accelerator Faculty Affiliates Jeremy Bailenson, professor of communication, and Anthony Wagner, professor of psychology; Dan Schwartz, Faculty Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning; and Kristen Blair, director of research for the Accelerator’s Digital Learning Initiative.
Faculty mentioned in this article: Candace Thille
