The Sustainability Game::AI Technology as an Intervention for Public Understanding of Cooperative Investment

Cooperative behaviour is a fundamental strategy for survival; it positively affects economies, social relationships, and makes larger societal structures possible. People vary, however, in their willingness to engage in cooperative behaviour in a particular context. Here we examine whether AI can be effectively used to to alter individuals' implicit understanding of cooperative dynamics, and hence increase cooperation and participation in public goods projects. We developed an intervention---the Sustainability Game (SG)---to allow players to experience the consequences of individual investment strategies on a sustainable society. %, when personal well being, communal space, and resources limitations are taken into consideration. Results show that the intervention significantly increases individuals' cooperative behaviour in partially anonymised public goods contexts, but enhances competition one-on-one. This indicates our intervention does improve transparency of the systemic consequences of individual cooperative behaviour

The Effect of Mortality Salience on Death Penalty Sentencing Decisions when the Defendant is Severely Mentally Ill.

The nature of capital punishment cases makes mortality a highly salient factor during trial proceedings. Previous research has explored the effect of mortality salience on human’s decision making in a legal context. This study extends this vein of research by examining the role death plays in jurors’ psychological processes when sentencing a defendant who is severely mentally ill in a capital trial. The current experiment measured mock jurors’ (n=169) and college students’, n=116) Mental Illness Worldview (MIWV), and then experimentally manipulated type of mortality salience (dual-focused: mock jurors who were specifically asked to contemplate their own mortality and were exposed to trial-related death references vs. trial focused: only exposed to death references) and the type of defendant (severely mentally ill vs. neutral) accused of a capital offense. We found that mock jurors perceived mental illness to be a mitigating factor when dual (i.e., self) focused mortality salience was induced, whereas participants only exposed to trial-related death references considered mental illness to be an important aggravating factor in sentencing

The sexual harassment victim prototype paradox: understanding perceptions of sexual harassment and victim neglect

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2023My collaborators and I propose that the women who disproportionately bear the brunt of sexual harassment are not the women who are typically represented as or imagined to be the targets of sexual harassment, facilitating their neglect. Across 25 studies, we show that various subsets of women who are disproportionately vulnerable to sexual violence, including sexual harassment (e.g., stereotypically masculine women (vs. more stereotypically feminine women), Black (vs. white) women, and transgender (vs. cisgender) women), are not culturally or mentally represented as sexual harassment and assault victims. They also are perceived to be unlikely victims of sexual harassment and are subject to neglect on various outcomes that are central to the legal, organizational, and interpersonal treatment of sexual harassment and assault. In part 1, studies demonstrate that people mentally represent sexual harassment victims as more gender prototypical women (e.g., more feminine). When a less (e.g., more feminine) vs. more (e.g., more masculine) gender prototypical woman was sexually harassed, the incident was less likely to be labeled as such and her claim was perceived as less credible. Additionally, the harassment was thought to cause her less harm and her harasser was given a more lenient punishment. In part 2, we demonstrate that Black (vs. white) women were underrepresented as victims/survivors of sexual violence, including sexual harassment, in Me Too news coverage and search engines. People also erroneously perceived Black (vs. white) women as less likely victims of sexual harassment, and Black (vs. white) women received less support when they publicly shared their stories of sexual harassment and assault during the #MeToo Twitter Hashtag Activism movement. In part 3, we extend the victim protoype to perceptions of transgender women and show that people (and especially people who deny the womanhood of transgender women) think that transgender women are far less likely victims of sexual harassment compared to cisgender women. Additionally, transgender women who experienced some forms of sexual harassment were perceived to be less credible than cisgender women, but equally harmed by it. A brief conclusion charts future directions for research on victim prototypes and neglect and potential interventions

Narrow Prototypes and Neglected Victims: Understanding Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2021Sexual harassment is pervasive and has adverse effects on its victims, yet perceiving sexual harassment is wrought with ambiguity, making harassment difficult to identify and understand. Eleven pre-registered, multi-method experiments (total N = 4,065 participants) investigated the nature of perceiving sexual harassment by testing whether perceptions of sexual harassment and its impact are facilitated when harassing behaviors target those who fit with the prototype of women (e.g., those who have feminine features, interests, and characteristics) relative to those who fit less well with this prototype. Studies A1-A5 demonstrated that participants’ mental representation of sexual harassment targets overlapped with the prototypes of women as assessed through participant-generated drawings, face selection tasks, reverse correlation, and self-report measures. In Studies B1-B4, participants were less likely to label incidents as sexual harassment when they targeted non-prototypical women compared to prototypical women. In Studies C1 and C2, participants perceived sexual harassment claims to be less credible and the harassment itself to be less psychologically harmful when the victims were non-prototypical women rather than prototypical women. This research offers theoretical and methodological advances to the study of sexual harassment through social cognition and prototypicality perspectives, and it has implications for harassment reporting and litigation as well as the realization of fundamental civil rights. For materials, data, and pre-registrations of all studies, see: https://osf.io/xehu9

The Underestimation of Transgender Women's Vulnerability to Sexual Harassment

Despite experiencing sexual harassment more frequently and more severely than cisgender women, transgender women survivors’/victims’ experiences of workplace sexual harassment are often omitted or ignored. Drawing from theorizing on victim prototypes and perceptions of sexual harassment, we show across six studies (total N = 2,022) that people incorrectly believe that transgender women are less likely to experience workplace sexual harassment compared to cisgender women. This effect is stronger among individuals who deny that transgender women are, in fact, women. We also show that people perceive transgender women who experience unwanted advances to be less credible than cisgender women experiencing the same harassment. Perceptions that transgender women are unlikely and non-credible victims of sexual harassment have important implications for understanding the erasure and neglect of transgender women survivors and the obstruction of transgender women’s civil rights