Designing for Empathy in VR: Navigating the Temporal Tension between State and Trait-Oriented Approaches

Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely regarded as a promising medium for fostering empathy due to its immersive and interactive capabilities in simulating lived experiences. However, many efforts to design effective empathic VR experiences have encountered persistent challenges, largely stemming from a lack of attention to the temporal dynamics of empathy – particularly the distinction between transient state empathy and more enduring trait empathy. Empathy unfolds across multiple stages, each characterized by distinct features and requiring different design and measurement strategies. Despite its significance, this temporal progression remains insufficiently addressed in the literature, leading to conceptual and methodological inconsistencies across studies. To address this gap, the present study synthesizes existing insights on the temporal structure of empathy, outlines how different components evolve over time, and offers design and evaluation strategies tailored to each stage. In doing so, it provides a clearer foundation for developing temporally coherent and theoretically grounded empathic VR interventions. © 2025 Owner/Author.