Waddle: Developing Empathy for Adélie Penguins By Direct Embodiment in Virtual Reality

Empathy is important for fostering social engagement with ecology. In this study we describe Waddle, a virtual reality (VR) experience designed to facilitate the direct embodiment of an Adélie Penguin moving through the key stages of their life cycle as an intervention to increase empathy. By collecting pre and post questionnaire data from forty-three grade 3 through 8 students attending a science festival, we find that Waddle was successful in facilitating an embodied experienceandsupportedasignificantincreaseintheparticipants’empathytoward penguins. We also find that greater embodiment was correlated with increased empathy, suggesting a casual relation that invites additional research into designing embodied experiences using immersive technologies as a method for developing empathy and fostering greater social engagement.