Reducing ingrained racism with virtual reality

Many scientists say that most people have what is called an innate racial bias, a bias that the holder is usually unaware of.

Now a team at the University of Barcelona say that spending a few minutes in virtual reality can change white people's perceptions of other skin colours.

In this experiment, when white skinned people were given a virtual body with darker skin, it was shown to reduce the participants' implicit racial bias.

Here, Professor Mel Slater from the University of Barcelona explains that virtual reality could one day be used to tackle racism in the real world.

Read more: Can virtual reality be used to tackle racism?

Watch more clips on the Click website. If you are in the UK, you can watch the whole programme on BBC iPlayer.

Video journalist: Andy Brownstone