Partners in Crime: Using Virtual Reality to Examine Peer Influences

• In Event: Contexts, social media and virtual reality: Novel approaches to studying peer offending

Abstract

"Partners in Crime” is a new collaborative research program of the Department of Criminology of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (MPI-CSL), and the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice of the University of Maryland. The research program aims to experimentally study the impact of peer influences on delinquency. To this end it leverages the immersive and interactive capabilities of virtual reality (VR) technology to experimentally study the impact of different factors, such as peer selection, influence, and situational cues, that are assumed to be related to delinquent behavior. The VR paradigm was designed specifically to identify causal effects, which has thus far remained illusive in the empirical literature due to the inability to observe peer interactions in the moment using conventional research methods. In this talk, I will explain the Partners in Crime VR paradigm, which is available to other researchers as part of a multi-lab study project, and present the findings of the first data collection using the paradigm.

Authors

• Jean-Louis van Gelder, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

• Yikang Zhang, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

• Wade C Jacobsen, University of Maryland