The Golden Rule of ethics in its negative form states that you should not do to others what you would not want others to do to you, and in its positive form states that you should do to others as you would want them to do to you. The Golden Rule is an ethical principle, but in virtual reality (VR), it can also be thought of as a paradigm for the promotion of prosocial behavior. This is because in VR, you can directly experience harm that you inflicted or were complicit in inflicting from the embodied perspective of the victim. This use of what we refer to as the Golden Rule Embodiment Paradigm (GREP) relies on participants in VR having the illusion of body ownership over a virtual body. In this article, we introduce virtual embodiment and the consequent illusion of ownership over the virtual body, and describe how this phenomenon has been utilized to influence implicit attitudes. We then introduce the GREP and give examples of studies in which it enhanced helping behavior.

消极形式的道德黄金法则指出，你不应该对别人做你不想别人对你做的事情，而积极形式则表明你应该对别人做你希望他们对你做的事情。黄金法则是道德原则，但在虚拟现实 (VR) 中，它也可以被视为促进亲社会行为的范式。这是因为在 VR 中，您可以从受害者的具身视角直接体验您造成的或共谋造成的伤害。我们所说的黄金法则体现范式 (GREP) 的这种使用依赖于 VR 参与者对虚拟身体拥有身体所有权的错觉。在这篇文章中，我们介绍了虚拟化身以及随之而来的对虚拟身体的所有权错觉，并描述如何利用这种现象来影响内隐态度。然后我们介绍 GREP 并举例说明它增强帮助行为的研究。