"Fair Play": A Videogame Designed to Address Implicit Race Bias Through Active Perspective Taking

Area of Science:

• Health Equity
• Medical Education
• Psychology

Background:

• Diverse faculty in academic health centers are crucial for diversifying the healthcare workforce and mitigating health disparities.
• Implicit race bias contributes to the underrepresentation of Black faculty in academia.
• The videogame "Fair Play" was developed to immerse players in the experiences of a Black graduate student facing subtle race bias.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether playing the videogame "Fair Play" leads to greater empathy and lower implicit race bias compared to reading a narrative.
• To assess the impact of active perspective-taking in a game environment on reducing bias.

Main Methods:

• Graduate students were recruited and randomly assigned to either play "Fair Play" or read a narrative account of the student's experiences.
• Implicit bias was measured using the Implicit Association Test.
• Empathy and awareness of bias were assessed via survey questions.

Main Results:

• Participants who played the game demonstrated the lowest implicit bias, but only when they reported high empathy for the character.
• While game players did not show higher empathy than text readers, high empathy predicted lower implicit bias specifically among those actively engaged in the game's perspective-taking.
• Women in the text-based condition reported the highest empathy.

Conclusions:

• Videogames can be effective tools for reducing implicit bias by cultivating empathy through immersive, active perspective-taking.
• This approach holds potential for addressing systemic issues contributing to underrepresentation in academic health centers.