Browsing by Subject "intergroup contact"

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    Interactive Narratives: Evaluating the Impact of Agency and Immersion on Empathy and Attitude Change Toward Marginalized Groups
    (2024-06) O'Dowd, Ian
    Interactive narratives provide the reader with a sense of agency and immersion by giving readers the ability to effect change in the story through choice. In this dissertation, I conducted a series of three empirical studies that aimed to bridge the gap between existing work on interactive narratives in the realm of computer-human interaction and the body of work on empathy in the field of social psychology. I developed interactive narratives based on the lived experiences of two marginalized social groups often subject to physical or social exclusion from public spaces. Specifically, I looked at accessibility in public bathrooms through the lens of physically disabled people and transgender people.In Study 1, I demonstrated the effectiveness of interactive narratives in promoting participants’ sense of agency or control, which, in turn, led to a variety of prosocial outcomes. I also aimed to induce a sense of immersion through these narratives, which shows great promise for yielding positive prosocial outcomes. In Study 1, I found that immersion seems more difficult to induce for participants who hold high levels of prejudice against the target group—especially for people in the transgender protagonist condition. In Study 2, I leveraged work on intergroup contact to encourage participants to individuate the protagonist. To do so, I manipulated the time point at which I told participants that the protagonist of the story was transgender. My findings ran counter to hypotheses—withholding the protagonist’s trans identity until the end of the story (which, theoretically, should have led to greater individuation of the protagonist) decreased immersion and, therefore, led to less empathetic outcomes in highly prejudiced individuals. In Study 3, I had participants take a measure of political ideology and told them whether they were ideologically similar to the story's protagonist. I found that although the results of Study 1 and Study 2 replicated, highly prejudiced participants did not report being more immersed in the narrative when I told them the protagonist was similar to them. With this line of research, I used several theoretical levers to attempt to immerse participants in the experience of another individual. In doing so, I demonstrate that certain factors (i.e., immersion) appear useful for promoting empathy. However, an effective one-size-fits-all intervention remains elusive when promoting empathy toward specific groups.
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    Student Intercultural Engagement in Transnational Higher Education: A Single Site Sample of a Transnational Institution Located in China
    (2018-02) Qu, Wanling
    The emergence of transnational joint venture universities provides a new model of education internationalization where the stakes are high and where the opportunities to study the under-researched field of student intercultural engagement are multidimensional and compelling. Since their institutional mission statements often involve language about cultivating global citizens and equipping students with the knowledge and intercultural skills needed to thrive as leaders and operators in a globalized marketplace, the importance of student intercultural engagement becomes profound. In this study, I investigate student intercultural engagement at a Chinese transnational joint-venture university located in China and particularly to identify students’ self-reported personal and institutional factors that influence student intercultural engagement. I utilized a mixed-method exploratory sequential research design, first involving on-campus and classroom-based observations, followed by four focus group interviews with 27 students, an online survey completed by 246 students, and finally 15 one-on-one in-depth interviews to explore student intercultural engagement topics in depth. The findings are broadly consistent from all phases. Among both the Chinese and international students that participated in my research, substandard English skills was perceived to be the top barrier to student intercultural engagement on campus. Another important insight is that student intercultural engagement is viewed as an inherently positive paradigm by higher education students; however, overwhelming cases have proved that student intercultural engagement does not “just happen”. Consistent with my qualitative findings, the multiple linear regression model shows that besides language skills, other statistically significant predictors of self-reported student intercultural engagement level/frequency include cross-cultural group project experiences, whether one is an “initiator” in intercultural interaction, as well as academic level (i.e., being in graduate school is significantly predictive of greater student intercultural engagement level/frequency than being an undergraduate student). To improve student intercultural engagement and the students’ general experiences on campus, and further to enhance the institution’s cohesiveness and long-term viability, the university needs to take deliberate and strategic actions to help all students on campus, Chinese or international, to jump out of their comfort zone and enter the challenging but rewarding intercultural interaction and engagement. Specifically, I propose the following recommendations: (1) to raise student admissions requirement; (2) to increase international student ratio; (3) to develop joint induction programs for new Chinese students and international students combined; (4) to create an intercultural peer mentoring program; (5) to organize more cross-cultural group projects; (6) to train academic staff on professional development about intercultural engagement; and (7) to establish a Global Engagement Center.