Popular claims of virtual reality systems serving as ‘empathy machines’ often fail to consider (a) the cognitive mechanisms driving the effects of technological immersion on empathy and (b) the conceptualization of empathy as a multidimensional construct. More, recent research has yielded mixed empirical support. This study investigates how dimensions of psychological presence—perceived self-location, sense of copresence, and judgments of social realism—mediate the effect of immersion on cognitive, affective, and associative empathy. Findings indicate that experiencing a news story via 360° video on a head-mounted display led to stronger self-location and copresence than engaging with the same video via desktop or reading a text version. While only copresence increased cognitive empathy, both self-location and copresence facilitated affective empathy. Whereas self-location and copresence enhanced associative empathy, social realism decreased it. These results highlight the value of a multidimensional conceptualization of empathy in investigating the prosocial potential of immersive media.

虚拟现实系统充当“移情机器”的流行主张常常没有考虑到（a）驱动技术浸入对移情的影响的认知机制，以及（b）将移情概念化为多维结构。此外，最近的研究得出了混合的经验支持。这项研究调查了心理存在的维度（感知到的自我定位，共处感和对社会现实主义的判断）如何介导沉浸感对认知，情感和联想移情的影响。研究结果表明，与通过台式机或阅读文本播放同一视频相比，在头戴式显示器上通过360°视频体验新闻故事具有更强的自我定位和共处感。虽然只有共处会增加认知移情，自我定位和共处都会促进情感共情。自我定位和共处增强了同情感，而社会现实主义则减少了它。这些结果凸显了移情的多维概念化在研究沉浸式媒体的亲社会潜力方面的价值。