Development and experimental validation of a dataset of 360°-videos for facilitating school-based bullying prevention programs

Virtual Reality (VR) is considered an effective way to boost empathy by adopting the perspective of others, thus having clear potential for improving anti-bullying programs. However, this potential benefit of VR is limited by both the lack of adequate content and the lack of empirical evidence of its effectiveness. In this article, we present the process of co-creation of a set of 360°-videos representing the experience of victims of bullying from a first-person perspective, involving secondary school students (N = 89). The impact of bullying content and VR presentation in terms of emotional response was later assessed in an experiment (N = 35) in which we collected both participants’ self-reported and psychophysiological measures of emotional state during the viewing. The results support the effectiveness of VR in producing realistic emotional responses to the acts of bullying, although differences between self-reported and psychophysiological measures were observed. Lessons learned, limitations, and implications for the use of VR for bullying prevention are discussed.