This study (N = 217) explores the potential for virtual reality to decrease social distance toward outgroup members among women. Raising the salience of individuals’ real physical identity through avatar customization and common ingroup identity manipulations was theorized to influence social distance. Participants who customized an avatar to resemble their real selves showed increased social distance. However, avatar customization also increased user identifiability, which was linked to reduced social distance. Priming a common ingroup identity increased identity salience but did not influence social distance. In examining heterogeneous effects by prior levels of issue involvement, participants with high and moderate involvement with immigration showed increased social distance after customizing an avatar to resemble their real selves, thus implying boomerang effects. The study discusses how avatar customization, identifiability, and common ingroup primes in virtual encounters may influence outgroup attitudes and intergroup relations.

这项研究（ñ = 217）探讨了虚拟现实降低女性与外联成员的社交距离的潜力。理论上，通过化身定制和常见的群体身份操纵来提高个人真实身体身份的显着性可影响社交距离。定制化身以类似于真实自我的参与者显示出增加的社交距离。然而，化身定制还增加了用户的可识别性，这与缩短的社交距离有关。启动共同的群体内身份可以增加身份显着性，但不会影响社交距离。在根据先前的问题参与程度检查异质性影响时，与移民有较高和中等参与的参与者在定制化身像他们的真实自我之后显示出社交距离的增加，因此暗示了回旋镖效应。该研究讨论了虚拟遭遇中的化身定制，可识别性和共同的群体内素如何影响群体外的态度和群体间的关系。