Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Psychology

Visual images can depict the same action or event from multiple points of view. Images from a first-person perspective depict events as seen through the actors' own eyes, whereas images from a third-person perspective depict events through the eyes of an observer who is watching an action take place. This dissertation examines how varying this aspect of images affects level of abstraction, which then leads to different interpretations of the same event. Four experiments tested whether visual perspective is related to thinking abstractly or concretely about actions. Across these studies, actions depicted in third-person images were described abstractly more often than were first-person images, and actions described abstractly were more often paired with third-person depictions of those actions. Two additional experiments tested whether point of view in visual images causes one to adopt either an abstract or a concrete mindset. In these studies, people who had been briefly exposed to third-person images were more likely to describe unrelated actions abstractly and to think that abstract descriptions fit Aesop's fables than people exposed to first-person images. These findings suggest that third-person images are more strongly associated with adopting an abstract processing style. Together, these studies attest to the significance of visual perspective in images and highlight the broader role of perspective in human cognition.

Committee: Lisa K. Libby (Committee Chair); Richard E. Petty (Committee Member); Kentaro Fujita (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Social Psychology

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Leadership and Change

Navigating departmental and organizational conflict is an essential function and responsibility of an academic unit leader (dean, associate dean, director, or chair) in higher education institutions (HEIs). During periods of organizational change, conflict tends to increase in complexity and difficulty—in part due to resistance to change—making it more difficult to manage in a constructive manner (Marcus, 2014). Much of the literature that looks at the academic unit leader and conflict focuses on personal conflict styles (or modes), types of conflicts encountered, and training on techniques and skills for conflict resolution and management. Missing from the literature is research that examines academic leaders' constructive-developmental mindsets (i.e., meaning-making structures) when dealing with and navigating conflict within their division (or institution) and the relationship between one's developmental mindset and their approach to engaging and navigating complex conflict. This study examines how nine academic unit leaders construct meaning when experiencing and navigating conflict situations amid organizational change (which HEIs experienced at an unprecedented level in 2020 and 2021). Additionally, it examines the relationship between how one constructs meaning and their capacity for constructive engagement and navigation of conflict. The primary finding from this study supports the hypothesis that academic leaders who demonstrate complex developmental mindsets hold a greater capacity to engage and navigate complex conflict situations in more deliberate and potentially constructive ways. Additionally, data from the research supports the notion that as an individual develops an increasingly more complex developmental mindset, their capacity for cognitive empathy (i.e., perspective-taking) increases. The study employed a multimethod approach, incorporating multiple case studies and a modified critical incident technique. Data were collected through the Subject- (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jon Wergin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Lize Booysen DBL (Committee Member); Richard McGuigan Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Educational Leadership; Higher Education

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2021, Psychology - Experimental

People regularly make social comparisons to form self-evaluations, assess the accuracy of opinions, regulate emotions, and guide behavior. Upward social comparisons are made with a person perceived to be "better" than oneself, and often result in negative outcomes such as lower mood and self-esteem. Conversely, downward social comparisons are made with a target perceived as "worse" than oneself and often improve mood and self-esteem. Contemporarily, people use social media to present the best versions of themselves (i.e., upward comparisons). This is best exemplified within the context of fitspiration, a movement on social media in which fit individuals showcase their healthy lifestyles, fitness levels, and attractiveness. Exposure to upward comparisons in this context can impair body image perceptions, increase feelings of objectification, and lead to pathological outcomes (e.g., the development of disordered eating). The current research examined the effects of exposure to fitspiration-based upward social comparison content on social media among males and females, as well as the moderating impact of perspective taking and racial similarity. Across two studies, participants viewed social media profiles of same-sex others designed to reflect either a fitness-related upward comparison or a neutral comparison. Moreover, the target person in the social media profile was either Black or White (which was then categorized to match or mismatch the participant's own racial category). In addition to the comparison content and race-match manipulations, participants in Study 2 (all female) were further instructed to take the perspective of the comparison other after exposure to the social media content or were in a control condition. After exposure to social media content, participants across both studies provided ratings of body image, self-esteem, affect, and health cognitions. Results showed that comparison direction affected participants' feelings of inspiration and intimi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jason Rose (Committee Chair); Jon Elhai (Committee Member); Andrew Geers (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Educational Studies

The current study aims to promote the development of early adolescents' social perspective taking (SPT) by addressing two challenges confronted in the realm of social-emotional learning intervention and SPT measurement. The first challenge revolved around how SPT can be cultivated and instructed using pedagogically effective approaches in complex and dynamic classroom settings. To address this challenge, the influence of collaborative small-group discussions on SPT assessed in fifth graders' reflective essays were examined. A total of 250 students and six teachers from 12 fifth-grade classrooms in two public middle/intermediate schools participated in a pre-post control quasi-experimental study. The classrooms of students were assigned to one of three conditions: Collaborative Social Reasoning (CSR), Read-Aloud (RA), or Regular Instruction (RI). Throughout the six-week intervention, CSR students read and discussed about complex issues arising from fiction stories in the context of English language arts classrooms. CSR students considered more social perspectives and provided more reasons to justify those perspectives in comparison with students in the RA and RI groups. The RA students generated more emotional reasons to justify their perspectives than RI students. To address the second challenge pertaining to developing a valid and reliable measure of SPT, a newly developed SPT coding scheme was designed and tested. The SPT coding scheme consisted of six main constructs, Perspective, SPT reasoning strategies, low-level SPT reasoning strategies, Personal Experience, Intertextual Comparison, and Coordination. The validity and reliability have been examined by correlating the SPT measures with students' social competence and social acceptance at pre-test. Overall, the findings confirmed the validity of SPT coding scheme.

Committee: Tzu-Jung Lin (Advisor); Michael Glassman (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2019, Psychology-Adult Development and Aging

Older adults often report better well-being than young adults, despite physical and cognitive declines that accompany aging. This paradox may be explained by older adults' better emotion regulation abilities and social support. Together, Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation Theory and Interdependence Theory offer a potential mechanism for how older adults are able to maintain emotion regulation success and suggest older adults might be more likely to shift their emotion regulation strategies to rely on and help manage the emotions of a romantic partner by using interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. However, extant emotion regulation research has mainly focused on individual regulation strategies even though the majority of situations requiring regulation involve a close social partner. The main goal of the present study was to understand what personal and social characteristics influence the use of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) in general and throughout an interaction. Data were collected using an online survey and an in-person, videotaped session. Emotion regulation preferences, frequency of emotion regulation use, relationship quality, and interpersonal skills were assessed. Researchers coded and participants self-identified their IER strategy use by viewing their videotaped interaction with their partner. Young adults, compared to middle-aged and older adults, preferred all emotion regulation strategies and those with better interpersonal skills and longer relationship durations, on average, used interpersonal strategies more frequently on a weekly basis. Participants expressed negative affect and withdrawal, and females expressed conflict as cues for intrinsic IER. Participants expressed positive affect, problem solving, support/validation, effective communication, and physical touch of the female partner as extrinsic IER. Couples interdependently helped each other regulate their emotions; specifically, older couples (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Stanley PhD (Advisor); Toni Bisconti PhD (Committee Member); Eric Allard PhD (Committee Member); Ingrid Weigold PhD (Committee Member); Shannon Zentall PhD (Committee Member); Christiane Hoppman PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Aging; Psychology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2018, Speech Pathology and Audiology

Previous research has examined the negative effects associated with accent discrimination as well as contexts which temper the negative attitudes and assumptions associated with foreign accents. The purpose of this study was to expand on research regarding the effects of semantic context and perspective-taking interventions on perceptions of accented speech. Specifically, we investigated whether context-awareness and experience taking the SPEAK test resulted in more favorable ratings for native Chinese-speakers on measures of accentedness, listener effort, and comfort level having the speaker as an instructor. The results indicated that the SPEAK experience did not significantly improve ratings of accented speech, and that context-awareness resulted in less favorable ratings. The effects of both experience taking the SPEAK test and context-awareness varied depending on the proficiency of the speaker. The discussion examines potential explanations for the results and identifies areas of further investigation.

Committee: Amber Franklin Ph.D. (Advisor); Aaron Shield Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Beard Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2018, Psychology

This study explored the role of social perspective-taking in accounting for the relationship that has been found between self-distancing and benefits such as lower emotional reactivity. Studies have shown that self-distancing can help people come to terms with emotionally upsetting experiences. We used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the processes that account for this relationship. 352 undergraduates reflected on a recent interpersonal conflict that still aroused strong emotions. Those who reflected on the conflict from a psychologically distanced perspective reported less intense feelings. Regression analyses indicated that social perspective-taking (e.g., reflecting on the conflict from the viewpoint of the other person) substantially mediated the relationship between self-distancing and lower emotional reactivity. A content analysis found that most of respondents' open-ended reflections on the conflict were scorable in terms of categories of social perspective-taking. Greater insight into the processes by which self-distancing promotes lower emotional reactivity and other benefits can enhance the effectiveness of cognitive interventions in therapeutic and educational contexts.

Committee: John Gibbs (Advisor); Stephen Petrill (Committee Member); Susan Johnson (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Philosophy, Applied

This dissertation explores the nature of empathy and its role in moral thinking and in medical practice. First, I focus on articulating an adequate philosophical account of affective empathy. One standard account of affective empathy involves imaginatively taking the perspective of a target, experiencing an affective match with the target's affective state, and maintaining a distinction between the self and the target. I argue that empathy requires perspective-taking and an affective match between the subject and the target, but that this match should be broadly construed. Such an account better captures several plausible cases of empathy, and it also better explains why we care about empathy. Second, I explore the purported role of empathy in ordinary moral thinking and motivation. Empathy is often associated with morally desirable characteristics or action. However, skeptics argue that empathy is overly provincial and often distorts our moral thinking. For this reason, they argue that we are better off ignoring or eliminating empathy from our moral thinking. I argue that moral thinking and motivation informed by a particular account of empathy (involving both cognitive understanding and affective responsiveness) produces better moral results than available alternatives, and I develop an account that explains why this occurs. Finally, I address the growing discussion of empathy in clinical settings, specifically the role of empathy in the physician-patient interaction. First, I develop a defense of cognitive empathy in clinical settings against critics who argue that it is either conceptually incoherent or overly liable to produce error. Second, I argue that recent proposals to employ affective accounts of empathy in physician-patient interactions are not justified epistemically, nor are they clearly supported by the relevant empirical literature. I argue that the ideal account of empathy in medicine remains cognitive, though there is a central role for expre (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Weber PhD (Advisor); Christian Coons PhD (Committee Member); Sara Worley PhD (Committee Member); Madeline Duntley PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Psychology

Conventional wisdom and psychological research suggest that empathy is one of the most effective ways to promote intergroup relations. We suggest, however, that certain types of empathy may in fact backfire and undermine intergroup relations. Specifically, in the present research we examined whether empathy focused only on a racial minority group target's disadvantages and struggles – what we refer to as paternalistic empathy – would lead majority group members to form more negative impressions of the target. In addition, we examined whether respectful empathy, or empathy that focuses on the target's strengths in addition to their disadvantages, would lead to more positive impressions of the target. In Study 1, White participants who engaged in paternalistic empathy for a Black target showed more pity for the target and perceived him as less competent (vs. a respectful empathy condition and a control condition). Participants who engaged in respectful empathy for the target perceived him as more competent (vs. the control condition). Study 2 addresses alternative explanations associated with the results of Study 1. Lastly, Study 3 was a two-part study that examined the effects of paternalistic empathy on White's behaviors toward a Black job candidate in an interview task, and how White's behaviors might in turn affect a job candidate's interview performance. In Study 3a we found that participants who engaged in paternalistic empathy asked the Black job candidate more non-diagnostic and fewer competence-eliciting interview questions. In Study 3b, we found a trend such that the interview questions asked by participants in the paternalistic empathy condition in Study 3a tended to elicit worse interview answers from a new sample of undergraduate students. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for strategies to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations.

Committee: Spencer Steven Ph.D. (Advisor); Crocker Jennifer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Fujita Kentaro Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Communication

Virtual environments offer a unique space to investigate human interactions with diverse groups. Many inequalities in society can be traced to many learned behaviors that pertain to one's racial identity. Past research has found that negative social influence of minority group stereotypes are experienced within virtual environments much the same way that they are in the real world. Embodying an avatar of a different race may activate a person's stereotypes towards that race, making it difficult to take the perspective of a person from that avatar's race. Narrative research has shown that lowering a participants' self-concept increased their willingness to take the perspective of a minority by revealing the identity of the character later in the story as opposed to early. The current study randomly assigned participants to not only embody a Black or White avatar, but also to one of two conditions which revealed the racial identity of their avatar early or later in Second Life, an online virtual world. The results indicate that manipulating the avatar's race and time of revelation to the participant had no effect on their implicit and explicit bias, their ability to take the perspective of the racial group the avatar belonged to, or their behavior. Implications for the Proteus Effect and perspective-taking within virtual environments are discussed.

Committee: Jesse Fox PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Communication

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

This qualitative, collaborative inquiry project explored the affordances of role enacted in Place Out of Time (POOT), an online, historical character-playing activity designed to promote deeper engagement with historical thinking and perspective taking. The overview of the dissertation presented in Chapter 1 is followed by three distinct literature reviews on history education, POOT, and games and roleplay. Methodologically, the principles of practitioner inquiry guided this work. This dissertation aimed to improve the educational activity of POOT by answering organic, emergent questions participants had about their experiences during and after participation. This research occurred in two different phases. During phase one, participants expressed a desire to understand the tensions around their firsthand experiences of portraying someone other than themselves. Phase two addressed the opportunities and challenges related to the inclusion of fictional, controversially portrayed, and artistic characters. Consequently, a more targeted investigation into the dimensions of character-play was conducted in phase two. These tensions were worthy of such an in-depth investigation because preliminary research revealed character selection impacted participant performance and the assessment of this performance. Participants included K-12 students enrolled in POOT through a participating middle school or high school classroom. Adults in related or supportive roles were also subjects in this research. Data was drawn from semi-structured interviews, and triangulated with written communications, online participation in POOT, online postings on support sites, and instructional support documents from iterations of POOT taking place between Fall 2010 and Fall 2012. Narrative data, as the primary data source, was analyzed using a polyvocal interpretation technique called McCormack's Lenses. The use of McCormack's Lenses involved four separate readings of data, listening for (1) narrative (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Prentice T. Chandler Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Sean C. Duncan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeff Kupperman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Vanessa Allen-Brown Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Psychology

Individuals from different groups often perceive and experience the exact same event differently, and these differences in perception persist when judging past injustice and present day discrimination. We attempted to investigate whether narrative voice influences individuals of different group memberships and attitudes, in perceiving victims of past injustice and whether that perception influences present day discrimination. Past research has shown that first-person narrative voice leads to favorable perception of the character and the character's group, although these effects were limited to in-group members and later revelation of the character's group membership (Kafman & Libby, 2011). Based on this, we predicted that to the extent voice influenced evaluation, first-person voice would lead to favorable perception of the victimized individual in the story and lead to higher perception of present day discrimination. We expected that the effect of voice may interact with group membership such that the predicted effect would emerge only for in-group members and not out-group members. We also predicted that racial attitudes may moderate the effect of voice on out-group members such that those with less racist attitudes would be more likely to show the predicted effects of narrative voice. In two studies, we manipulated narrative voice, first-person or third-person, of a story about a historical instance of racial discrimination and measured participants' evaluation of the target of that discrimination and judgment of present day discrimination. In Study 1, we looked at Black and White participants' responses. In Study 2, we also manipulated whether participants were affirmed or not to see whether White participants high in racist attitudes would have narrative voice effect when they are self-affirmed. We found support that narrative voice interacted with group membership and racial attitudes of the participant in predicting evaluation of the target of discrimination (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa K. Libby (Advisor); Jennifer Crocker (Committee Member); Robert Arkin (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Communication; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Psychology

Identification refers to the imaginative process of assuming the perspective and identity of a character in a work of fiction, which leads individuals to experience, through simulation, the events of a narrative as if they were a particular character and to take on that character's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, goals, and traits, while in the story world. In this dissertation, I seek to redress the paucity of empirical research on identification by presenting eight studies investigating several of its fundamental antecedents and consequences for readers of literary fiction. In Chapter 1, results from two studies showed that versions of short stories that utilized first-person (versus third-person) narration, included references to a main character's thoughts and feelings in response to story events, and featured a main character who shared a relevant group membership with readers, compared to versions of stories that lacked one or more of these elements, evoked higher levels of identification and greater adoption of a character's intentions and behaviors. In Chapter 2, four studies investigated how readers' level of self-concept accessibility impacts the extent to which they experience identification. Three studies demonstrated that a chronically or temporarily lowered state of self-concept accessibility increased, and a heightened state of self-concept accessibility decreased, readers' levels of identification and incorporation of a character's trait into their self-concepts. A fourth study revealed that if participants were placed in a negative state of self-reflection prior to reading a narrative, however, they reported higher levels of identification with a protagonist, perhaps stemming from the desire to escape the self. In Chapter 4, two studies explored the possibility that encouraging identification with characters who are members of stigmatized groups could be an effective means of reducing stereotypes and prejudice. Specifically, these studies showed that (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa K. Libby (Advisor); Richard E. Petty (Committee Member); Kentaro Fujita (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Communication

Although some reports are rather dim regarding citizens' levels of political knowledge, research has shown that certain things can cause this level to rise, at least at the individual level. With this focus in mind, the goal of this study is to further examine the impact of political discussion on political knowledge. First, political knowledge is explicated as an overarching concept with two dimensions. These two dimensions are factual and structural knowledge. The concept of political discussion is also explicated as an overarching concept but with three dimensions, including discussion frequency, discussion content (measured as the dissimilarity of political views in discussion), and discussion cognition (using a discussion elaboration as well as a perspective taking measure). Finally, hypotheses including several mediating relationships are set forth bridging the various dimensions of political discussion and political knowledge together. In order to examine the relationships between the various dimensions of these two concepts, three studies were completed. Study 1 utilized data from the 2000 ANES, examining the impact of discussion frequency and dissimilarity on factual knowledge, as well as the impact of discussion dissimilarity on structural knowledge. Study 2 examined relationships between discussion dissimilarity, perspective taking, and structural knowledge. Data for this study was derived from The Ohio Political Survey (TOPS) conducted in the fall of 2006 and early winter 2007. Data for study 3 was collected in the fall of 2005 from 18 public high schools in an urban Midwestern school district. Although data are available from teachers, parents, and students, only student data were used for this study, where the full model including relationships between all dimensions of political discussion and knowledge were examined. Results indicate that factual knowledge is predicted by both discussion frequency and dissimilarity. Moreover, the relationship between (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Eveland (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Psychology

Beyond its relationship to general cognitive development, the transition from pragmatic to mutualistic moral judgment during adolescence may relate to social experiential processes. Social experiences of particular theoretical interest in this study pertain to social perspective-taking in friendships, and in particular, the sharing of perspectives afforded by intimate friendships. The present study investigated these possible relationships using a sample of 405 adolescent students recruited from grades seven through twelve in a Midwestern middle-class suburban school district. Mutualistic moral judgment was assessed using a recent Kohlbergian stage measure. Verbal ability and social experiential processes accounted for comparable portions of the variance in adolescent moral judgment. General friendship perspective-taking correlated with friendship intimacy, and each separately predicted moral judgment maturity. Females reported higher levels of friendship perspective-taking, and (as a trend) evidenced more mature moral judgment during early adolescence. Overall, friendship perspective-taking experiences, both generally and within the context of intimate dyads, may facilitate the development of mutualistic moral judgment during adolescence.

Committee: John Gibbs (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Developmental

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2005, Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Numerous studies have assessed dating and marital satisfaction (e.g., Karney & Bradbury, 1995); however, most assessed only one member of the couple (Attridge, Berscheid, & Simpson, 1995). Previous research demonstrated that there are many variables correlated with relationship satisfaction, such as positive perceptions of one's partner, whether real or illusionary (Davis & Oathout, 1987; Murray et al., 1996a), self-disclosure (Millar & Millar, 1988), and empathy (Davis & Oathout, 1987). Positive, clear, and confidently held mental representations about one's partner have also been associated with having satisfying relationships (Gurung, Sarason, & Sarason, 2001). Overall, feminine characteristics have been correlated with relationship satisfaction more frequently than masculine (e.g. Langis et al., 1994). Furthermore, some research has demonstrated that when both partners were high in femininity, the couple was happier than couples where only one or neither individual was high in femininity (Antill, 1983). The present design represents an improvement over many of the past studies as both members of a dating couple were assessed. Factors assessed for their association with relationship satisfaction included feminine and masculine characteristics, hypergender beliefs, communal and exchange beliefs, empathy, perspective-taking, self-disclosure, positive and negative partner concepts, partner worth, and clarity of partner perceptions. Additionally, both members of the couple rated their perceptions of themselves as well as their perceptions of their partners on the characteristics of femininity, masculinity, self-disclosure, empathy, and perspective-taking. Results indicated that perceptions of self and partner as high in femininity were correlated with higher ratings of relationship satisfaction for both men and women. Perceiving self as high in femininity and holding clear, positive perceptions about their partners were predictive of men's dating satisfaction. For wo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christine Gidycz (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, General

MA, Kent State University, 2010, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Research about translation as a learning tool and how it can help learners become aware and adjust to the perspective encoded in a second language is lacking in the literature. This study investigated whether translation helps learners acquire the perspective (different ways of seeing the world) encoded in a second language and thus communicate more effectively. Writings of native and non-native speakers were compared by means of an ANOVA test to see how they differed among each other before and after practice on how to write descriptions. In order to operationalize the concept of perspective and allow for assessment of the value of translation as a learning technique, the descriptions were analyzed with respect to information organization at the clause level in accordance with thematic structure as proposed by functional grammarians. Two groups of non-native speakers practiced how to write descriptions. The control group practiced writing descriptions by means of techniques currently used in second language teaching, while the experimental group's practice was based on translation assignments. The study demonstrated that the experimental group proved to adjust to native-like ways of writing descriptions and thus to the perspective encoded in the second language, while the control group stayed basically the same. In addition, surveys were carried out to investigate learners' opinions about the use of translation in the second language classroom. The results show that, generally speaking, learners have a positive view on the use of translation as a learning tool in the second language classroom.

Committee: Klaus Gommlich PhD (Advisor); Karl Uhrig PhD (Committee Member); Kristen Precht PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Communication

This dissertation examines how stigma labels and emotional arousal at story-ending impact narrative processing and in-group perception. In particular, the impact of a character's stigma label and affect aroused at story-ending on identification and its component dimensions is explored. This dissertation focuses on exploring the identification process because it is argued to be a key aspect of narrative involvement that can encourage de-stigmatization. Based on the perspective that positive affect can cue approach (Slovic et al., 2003), it is hypothesized that a happy-ending narrative and a non-stigmatized protagonist will correspond to greater overall identification compared to a sad-ending narrative featuring a stigmatized protagonist. This dissertation also proposes that examining the separate components of identification may illuminate the distinct influences of stigma label and emotional arousal on aspects of character involvement. Furthermore, adding a perspective-sharing component to the identification construct may increase its predictive validity on in-group perception outcomes. More specifically, merged perspective with a stigmatized character, which includes perspective-sharing and empathic perspective-taking, is argued to be key to motivating in-group perception. Finally, this dissertation explores the notion that identification can function not only as a continuous online process, but also as a retrospective re-appraisal. Participants (n=308) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions, where they read a short story that featured a protagonist who was either HIV-positive, bipolar, or had no stigma, and a story-ending that was either happy or sad. Afterwards, participants completed a post-test through MediaLab (Jarvis, 2009) where they answered explicit attitude measures about identification with the protagonist, empathy for the protagonist's stigmatized group, stigma attitudes regarding HIV/bipolar disorder, transportation into the narrat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Slater (Advisor); David Ewoldsen (Committee Member); Michelle Ortiz (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication