The Empathic Metaverse: An Assistive Bioresponsive Platform For Emotional Experience Sharing

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Empathic Metaverse, a bioresponsive virtual platform designed to enhance emotional sharing and prosocial behavior, addressing social issues of current social media and fostering a more empathetic society.

Contribution

It proposes a novel bioresponsive platform that adapts to users' physiological and cognitive states to promote emotional sharing and prosocial interactions in the Metaverse.

Findings

Design of bioresponsive avatars and environments

Framework for adaptive mediated communication

Potential to foster prosocial behavior and emotional understanding

Abstract

The Metaverse is poised to be a future platform that redefines what it means to communicate, socialize, and interact with each other. Yet, it is important for us to consider avoiding the pitfalls of social media platforms we use today; cyberbullying, lack of transparency and an overall false mental model of society. In this paper, we propose the Empathic Metaverse, a virtual platform that prioritizes emotional sharing for assistance. It aims to cultivate prosocial behaviour, either egoistically or altruistically, so that our future society can better feel for each other and assist one another. To achieve this, we propose the platform to be bioresponsive; it reacts and adapts to an individual's physiological and cognitive state and reflects this via carefully designed avatars, environments, and interactions. We explore this concept in terms of three research directions: bioresponsive avatars, mediated communications and assistive tools.