4 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Video Games As A Catalyst For Empathy And Perspective Taking
Video games today are an expanding their reach into greater popular acceptance and are broadening the diversity of content, and despite relative youth compared to more mature expressive mediums like literature and film, people are critically analyzing games and trying to hold games as an entire medium to a higher standard of quality. In particular many people are calling for more development of and championing existing games that address meaningful topics, like global conflict, mental illness, and complexity of relationships, that elevate games to become more culturally meaningful and reflective of human truths. In particular, empathy in games and as a result of games is a growing area of research.
This thesis addresses how games can elicit empathy and explores the interplay of intractable conflict, empathy, and prejudice, generally, and through an experiment with a strategy game, PeaceMaker, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The thesis concludes with a culmination of what the findings of this research and recommendations for the industry to create more impactful games
Recommended from our members
Leadership complexity while navigating a complex conflict: Linking individual attributes with dynamic decision-making processes
Research on dynamical systems theory has demonstrated the vital role that higher levels of complexity play in the constructive management of complex conflicts. Requisite complexity theory proposes that there are stable individual complexity attributes that contribute to a dynamic complexity process that allows an individual to more effectively engage with complex and dynamic decision-making scenarios over time. However, to date, no research has empirically tested the relationships between these attributes and patterns of thought, affect and behavior in individuals engaging with complex tasks. This research examined the relationships between five proposed individual complexity attributes – cognitive complexity, perceived emotional complexity, tolerance for ambiguity, consideration for future consequences and behavioral repertoire – and level of integrative complexity, complexity of emotional experience and patterns of decision making while engaging with a complex conflict resolution simulation. Results provide initial support for the requisite complexity model, with cognitive complexity, perceived emotional complexity, tolerance for ambiguity and consideration for future consequences all demonstrating predictive validity for various aspects of the dynamic decision-making process. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, along with proposed avenues for future research
Action diversity in a simulation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
<p>This article explores the strategies used by Israeli students to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the interactive computer game, PeaceMaker. Students played PeaceMaker in the roles of both the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President in random order. Students must take actions satisfying constituents on both sides of the conflict in order to win the game. The diversity of actions taken in each role was measured. Several hypotheses test the degree to which Israeli students, depending on which role they played and their own demographic variables, exploited a consistent set of actions or explored a more diverse range of actions across three main types: construction, political, and security. The results show that (1) greater action diversity increases success in both roles, (2) Israeli students engaged in less diverse actions when playing the Israeli role than when playing the Palestinian role, (3) students’ religiosity and political Hawkishness negatively predicted action diversity when playing the Palestinian role, and (4) action diversity mediates the relationship between a student’s background knowledge about the conflict and success in the Israeli role. The significance of these findings for understanding attitudes about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are discussed, including implications for conflict resolution more generally.</p