Intergroup Empathy
For my dissertation work, I examined why groups with historical conflicts fail to see eye-to-eye in the present and proposed getting information about a past victim’s experiences in a first-person (vs. third-person) narrative differentially influence perceptions of present-day discrimination. This project was a 5+ year long-term project with over a dozen studies that received student research grant and produced multiple national and international presentations and theses. Here, I will briefly discuss general research procedure and methods involved in this project and a gist of findings.
Background Research / Preparation
This project started with my observation - I often encountered members of different racial groups having divergent perceptions of historical injustices and present-day discrimination against racial minorities. To determine potential factors that may have led to these divergent perceptions, I did a thorough literature review within the field of social psychology. In addition to understanding psychological mechanisms, I wanted to apply my findings to help different group members to arrive at mutual understanding. Since people often encounter a victim’s story through different forms of narratives and since literature suggests that people often assume experiences of fictional characters in good writing, I decided to explore the effect of narrative voice in a story of a victim’s experiences. Once I formulated my ideas and had done a thorough background research, I presented the idea to lab and department members for feedback. After several revisions of details of the idea, I operationalized these conceptual details into measurable study designs.
Data Collection
I recruited both historically victimized and perpetrator group members for these studies, so that I could compare group differences in understanding of a victim’s experiences. Although I mostly used the usual psychology department participant pool (i.e., college students), I had to look for different participant pool to get victimized group members because the psychology department participant pool tended to have very few of them. To do so, I recruited paid participants using student research grant, as well as ran online studies on Mechanical Turk to have balanced number of victimized and perpetrator group members.
Most studies were ran in a lab setting. Participants came into the lab, set at the individual station, and received materials. The stories were given in a printed form. Once participants finish reading, they completed questionnaire with measurements on a computer. Questionnaires were usually programmed on Qualtrics or MediaLab.
Data Analysis
Using SPSS, PROCESS, and R, I ran correlation and regression analysis. Within regression, I ran moderation and mediation analysis to look at more detailed causal relationships among factors I measured. For qualitative studies, I had my research associates code stories participants wrote into broader themes and used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program to code frequently used words. This way, I could get both qualitative and quantitative understanding of participants’ stories.
Findings
Members of historically victimized groups and historical perpetrator groups differ in the level of understanding of past victim's experiences (i.e., 'experience-taking' - a similar, but distinct concept from empathy), and this divergent level of experience-taking seems to be one reason for group differences in perceptions of present-day injustices against the historically victimized group. In addition, I found that getting information about a past victim in a first-person (vs. third-person) narrative has a potentially positive effect on intergroup relations. Reading a first-person narrative of past racial injustice appears to increase experience-taking with the victim, especially when threat to group identity is reduced.
Outcome
Presentations: Findings from this project have been presented at departmental meetings and national and international conferences to both academic and non-academic audiences. Presentations varied in format from poster presentations to 15-minute to 90-minute talks.
Writings: I wrote my master’s thesis and dissertation based on this project findings. I also wrote several abstracts for conferences.
Grant: In addition to various supports from the psychology department, I received $4,800 student research grant from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. The grant was used to recruit minority participants who were difficult to obtain through regular student participant pool.
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Study Design
I used both qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g., surveys and experiments) to get at the research questions.
Surveys: I asked questions related to key factors such as respondents’ understanding of past injustices against a group, perception of present-day discrimination, and their level of prejudice against that group.
Experiments: I created stories of a historical victim’s experience, such as a Black student’s experience on the first day of school desegregation, in first- or their-person narrative voice, and measured key factors mentioned above. I used stories of various historically victimized groups that had been both legally and socially discriminated against (e.g., Jews, Blacks, women).
Qualitative studies: In addition to surveys and experiments, I also ran few qualitative studies where respondents were given a theme of discrimination and asked to write a short story in a victim or perpetrator’s point of view. This was to get at what kind of language and voice people spontaneously take when thinking about a victim vs. perpetrator’s experience.
