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Virtual Reality Training for Sexual Harassment?

Newsweek

Originally Posted: Feb. 1, 2015

Most women have dealt with unwanted sexual advances. In fact, one national survey estimates that 65 percent have experienced some form of street harassment. But a study out of Southern Methodist University found that teenage girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after undergoing assertive resistance training in virtual reality.

While virtual reality is routinely used to train soldiers or treat anxiety disorders, training of this nature is new.

Virtual simulations “seem to be more immersive than face-to-face role plays,” said clinical psychologist Lorelei Simpson Rowe, the study’s lead author. “The participant is not thinking any more about being in a room in a psychology study with other people around,” she is “focused on what she is seeing through the glasses and what she’s hearing.” READ MORE

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