Scientists have used body swapping experiments, illusions induced through virtual reality, to make white people feel they are inhabiting black bodies and adults feel like they have children’s bodies.

Those who experienced having black skin had their unconscious biases against black people diminished.

And adults who felt as if they had children’s bodies believed that aspects of themselves were more childlike after they experienced the illusion

A paper in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences shows the results of the experiments have important implications for approaching race and gender discrimination.

Negative attitudes about others are often formed at a young age and they’re thought to remain stable throughout adulthood.

However, few studies have examined whether these social biases can change.

Professor Manos Tsakiris of the Royal Holloway University of London and Professor Mel Slater of University College London and the University of Barcelona have developed ways to expose people to illusions which give them a body different from their own in respect to race, age or gender.

“Our findings are important as they motivate a new research area into how self-identity is constructed and how the boundaries between ‘ingroups’ and ‘outgroups’ might be altered,” says Professor Tsakiris.

“More importantly though, from a societal point of view, our methods and findings might help us understand how to approach phenomena such as racism, religious hatred, and gender inequality discrimination, since the methods offer the opportunity for people to experience the world from the perspective of someone different from themselves.”

While there is no simple “cure” for racism or other biases, “the research shows that integration of different sensory signals can allow the brain to update its model of the body and cause people to change their attitudes about others,” says Professor Slater.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn