A Virtual Reality Couples' Intervention for Sexual Victimization Prevention: a Gender-swapping Transformative Approach

Participants will embody a virtual avatar of their female partner in a sexual harassment scenario using full-body tracking, and identity exchange in virtual reality (VR). The goal is to assess whether experiencing harassment from a first-person perspective increases empathy and decreases tolerance toward sexual harassment.

Participants will embody a virtual avatar of their female partner in a neutral social interaction scenario using VR-based identity exchange. This condition controls for the effect of perspective-taking alone, without exposure to harassment, to evaluate its impact on empathy and gender attitudes.