Video Games and Attitude Change: A Meta-analysis

Despite extensive research on attitudes and a rapid growth of the video game market, there is currently no meta-analysis mapping the link between narrative video games and attitude change. Here, we present such meta-analysis. The findings suggest that narrative video games affect players’ attitudes towards the topics depicted in games. This effect was present in studies focused on changes in both implicit (g = 0.36, k = 18) and explicit attitudes (g = 0.24, k = 101), with longer intervention duration and game mechanics such as stereotyping and meaningful feedback resulting in larger implicit attitude change. Regarding the robustness of the underlying evidence, half of the included studies were judged to be at high risk of bias. On the other hand, the impact of publication bias in this literature was found to be negligible. Altogether, this meta-analysis provides evidence that video games shape how we think about events they represent.

The Project Implicit International Dataset: Measuring Implicit and Explicit Social Group Attitudes and Stereotypes Across 34 Countries (2009–2019)

For decades, researchers across the social sciences have sought to document and explain the worldwide variation in social group attitudes (evaluative representations, e.g., young-good/old-bad) and stereotypes (attribute representations, e.g., male–science/female–arts). Indeed, uncovering such country-level variation can provide key insights into questions ranging from how attitudes and stereotypes are clustered across places to why some places have stronger attitudes and stereotypes than others (including ecological and social correlates). Here, we introduce the Project Implicit:International (PI:International) dataset that uniquely propels this research forward by offering the first cross-country dataset of both implicit (indirectly-measured) and explicit (directly-measured) attitudes and stereotypes across multiple topics and years. Specifically, PI:International comprises 2.3 million tests for 7 topics (race, sexual orientation, age, body weight, nationality, and skin-tone attitudes, as well as men/women–science/arts stereotypes) using both indirect (Implicit Association Test; IAT) and direct (self-report) measures collected continuously from 2009 to 2019 from 36 country-specific websites in each country’s native language(s). We show that the IAT data from PI:International has adequate internal consistency (split-half reliability), convergent validity (implicit–explicit correlations), and known groups validity. Given such reliability and validity, we summarize basic descriptive results on the overall strength and variability of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes around the world. The PI:International dataset, including both cleaned data and trial-level data from the IAT, is provided openly to facilitate wide access and novel discoveries on the global nature of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes.

White civilians’ implicit danger evaluation of police officers underlies explicit perception of police

The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the “shooter bias” suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians’ possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police. The current work begins to address this gap. In two within-subjects studies, we separately assess police-threat (i.e., safety/danger) and police-valence (i.e., good/bad) associations as well as their relative influences on explicit perceptions of police. Study 1 revealed that implicit threat evaluations (police-danger associations) more strongly predicted negative explicit views of the police compared to implicit valence evaluations (police-negative associations). Study 2 replicated these findings and suggests that individuals evaluate the police as more dangerous versus negative when each response is pitted against each other within single misattribution procedure trials. The possible implications for explicit attitudes toward police reform and behavior during police-civilian encounters are discussed.

Explicit and implicit attitudes toward people with COVID-19: Need for community mental health services

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, social stigmatization of people who have been infected with the virus has been observed. This study measured the degree of social stigma by examining implicit and explicit attitudes toward people with COVID-19. Explicit attitudes were measured through self-reporting, taking into account the three components of behavior, cognition, and emotion, and we used the Single-Category Implicit Association Test to assess implicit attitudes. The findings show that explicit attitudes toward people with COVID-19 were positive, whereas implicit attitudes trended toward being negative. The results suggest that mental health services and policies are needed to reduce social stigma and prevent the risk of mental health problems among people who have been infected with COVID-19.

Attitudes toward service robots: analyses of explicit and implicit attitudes based on anthropomorphism and construal level theory

Purpose Building on both the uncanny valley and construal level theories, the analyses detailed in this paper aims to address customers’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward various service robots, categorized by the degree of their human-like appearance, namely, mechanoids (low human-likeness), humanoids (medium human-likeness) and realistic robots (high human-likeness). Design/methodology/approach The analyses reflect a mixed-method approach, across three studies. A qualitative study uses focus groups to identify consensual attitudes. An experiment measures self-reported, explicit attitudes toward the three categories of robots. Another experiment explores customers’ implicit attitudes (unconscious and unintentional) toward robots, using three implicit association tests. Findings Customers express both positive and negative attitudes toward service robots. The realistic robots lead to both explicit and implicit negative attitudes, suggesting that customers tend to reject these robots in frontline service settings. Robots with lower human-likeness levels generate relatively more positive attitudes and are accepted to nearly the same extent as human employees in hospitality and tourism contexts. Practical implications Because customers reject, both consciously and unconsciously, very human-like robots in service encounters, managers should leverage this key finding, along with the more detailed results, to inform their strategic introduction of robots into hospitality frontline service settings. Originality/value The combined qualitative and quantitative studies specify and clarify customers’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward robots with different levels of human-likeness, in the real-world setting of hospitality and tourism services. Such insights can inform continued research into the effects of these service innovations.

AN EXAMINATION OF MEN'S IMPLICIT ASSOCIATIONS TOWARDS GENDER AND VIOLENCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS AND BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD

Violence is being researched increasingly. However, these studies mostly focus on explicit attitudes. Studies focusing on the implicit cognitive structure point to three implicit attitudes: Implicit attitudes towards gender, implicit attitudes towards violence, and implicit associations between gender and violence. In the present study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between these implicit attitudes of men and their demographic characteristics including age, education, employment status, income and socio-economic status, and Belief in a Just World (BJW). To measure implicit attitudes, three Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were translated into Turkish. Two hundred two men, aged between 18 and 55 years (M. = 27.96, SD = 9.68), participated in the study. The findings revealed that implicit attitudes towards gender and violence were associated with age, but not with other demographics. While implicit associations between gender and violence did not differ in terms of demographics, they were found to be related to implicit attitudes towards gender and General BJW. The results were evaluated in the context of normalizing violence against women in society. It is thought that the IATs used can contribute to the intervention programs in Turkey, and the findings obtained with this demographically diverse sample can contribute to the relevant literature. Keywords Belief in a just world, male violence, Implicit Association Test, implicit attitudes

Organizational Structure and Artificial Intelligence. Modeling the Intraorganizational Response to the AI Contingency

Different and profound are the consequences of the further development of artificial intelligence (AI) on society. One of the manifestations of the upcoming changes is the plethora of novel ways in which companies may organize labor and capital. So far, the influence of AI on organizational structure has been mainly studied from either a technological or a broader decision-making perspective. Our paper provides a unique take on the topic, emphasizing the distinctive role of human agency and its function in the upcoming AI-driven organizational changes. Relying on the existing academic literature, we theorized a set of hypotheses concerning best fits to the AI contingency on both macro and meso-organizational levels. To test whether the hypothesized changes might encounter organizational inertia or resistance from jobholders, multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was applied to the online survey results. Four types of current and potential jobholders were distinguished according to their explicit attitudes towards hypothesized organizational changes: skeptics, doubtful skeptics, optimists, and doubtful optimists, the latter consisting primarily of emerging adults. Finally, we developed a model of intraorganizational response to the AI contingency based on four theoretical groups of individuals, as determined by the analysis. Our findings showed doubtful optimists to be the most important group, able to set organizational trends and positively influence skeptics and doubtful skeptics. Accordingly, promoters of AI-driven organizational changes are advised to design their communication efforts around emerging adults. As the survey was conducted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, its sociological and managerial implications are relevant to the looming reality of the postpandemic world.

EXPRESS: Emotion perception bias associated with the hijab in Austrian and Turkish participants

In a cross-cultural study, we investigated the link between explicit attitudes towards the hijab, and implicit measures of cultural and religious bias during the recognition of emotions. Participants tested in Austria (N = 71), and in Turkey (N = 70) reported their attitude towards the hijab, and categorised in a mousetracker task happy and sad faces of women, shown with five levels of intensity, and framed either by a hijab or by an oval-shaped mask. The two samples did not differ in their explicit attitudes towards the hijab. However, negative attitude towards the hijab predicted greater sadness attribution to happy faces with the hijab in Austrian participants. Unrelated to their explicit attitudes, Turkish participants attributed more sadness to happy faces with than without the hijab. Results suggest that the sight of the hijab activated, in both Austrian and Turkish participants, implicit biases resulting in associations with sadness and negative emotions.