A study from the “University of Minnesota” states that VR headsets are unintentionally sexist towards female users.
A recent study from the “University of Minnesota” found that VR headsets are sexist towards women. But not in the way most would think. This is not a political discussion, but rather a biological one.
Perhaps some of you have noticed that women and men have different body structures – seriously! This leads to the fact that women apparently suffer from motion sickness when traveling or sailing more often than men. The scientists tested both gender groups to see how quickly they felt nauseous when playing different VR games.
This graphic shows the results of the study. The dark gray bar indicates when the test subjects felt comfortable, and the lighter one indicates when they felt nauseous. Click to enlarge the graphic.
Women mainly feel sick in First-Person VR
To examine how much the individual test subjects were affected by the Oculus Rift, the scientists focused primarily on swaying. Swaying refers to how people move back and forth while standing. If someone feels dizzy, they sway more. These sways were measured before and after the participants played the games. The following VR games were tested:
Balancer Rift: In this game, participants had to run through a maze using head movements. In the graphic (Fig 1), it can be seen that women indeed felt sick more often than men. However, this difference was so slight that it cannot be considered statistically significant.
Affected: This POV game is a first-person thriller where you move through the halls of a cursed villa with a controller but can look around freely with the headset. As shown in the graphic (Fig 3), this game challenged all test subjects. This time, however, there was a significant difference between men and women! To be precise, the ratio of women who felt sick compared to men was 2.33:1
Women are generally more susceptible to symptoms of motion sickness
It has long been scientifically confirmed that women feel sick from certain movements faster than men. It was therefore expected that they might have more issues with this phenomenon in VR than men. More research should follow to identify what exactly triggers this effect in women and whether it can at least be mitigated.
The game Affected has already shown that the female brain seems to struggle with processing the first-person perspective well. An important point here is that there was no simulated body in this game. There were no hands, no feet when looking down, and no nose sitting between the eyes. The absence of a body could also have played a role in why women felt sick during the first-person game. The study did not include a visual perception test.
Despite still missing data, it can be said that this study is important for the future of VR. Developers should address this issue and continue researching the problem of VR motion sickness. It is certainly advisable to provide a wide range of games that consider perspective perception. This way, it ensures that there is something for everyone in this new medium, without making them feel sick.
Leya says: I was surprised by the results of this study, as I personally have never experienced problems with VR and feeling sick. However, I must say that I generally do not get sick easily, which seems to be typical for women. According to this study, problems arise more often with first-person VR. That makes VR particularly exciting. Perhaps such studies can help find a solution that allows both genders to fully enjoy VR. Because, as can be seen in the graph, there are also many men who get dizzy from VR.
Do you know many or are you women who feel sick from VR? Those who, like me, do not feel sick from VR may be interested in this Playstation VR game list.
