Empathy –the ability to recognize and share the thoughts and emotions of another person– is not just a nice-to-have ability. It’s a critical skill for those working in certain professions like doctors and nurses. An empathetic bedside manner can make a huge difference in making patients more comfortable, helping them recover, and even making them less likely to complain or sue hospitals. As such, it’s something to be not only sought out by doctors and nurses, but actively trained during their time in school.
What if video games could help with that? Some recent research suggests that it could and that virtual reality games may even make people experience greater empathy.
The researchers had nursing students play the soul-wrenching game That Dragon, Cancer, a point-and-click style game about a family whose very young son has terminal cancer. I feel a little sad just typing that, but the subjects had