So suggests a new study that used virtual patients — computer-generated people able to carry on a limited conversation with human counterparts — to test how medical students respond to white- and dark-skinned patients. The study found that the white third-year students were less empathetic with dark-skinned than light-skinned virtual patients during brief one-on-one interviews, suggesting racial bias extends from real people to their virtual representations.

“You are seeing a transfer of bias come through the screen,” said Benjamin Lok, an assistant professor of computer and information science and engineering.

Lok is one of five authors of a paper on the study set to appear this fall in the journal Intelligent Virtual Agents.

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