Alleviating xenophobia : can reading narratives that humanize foreigner protagonists change our attitudes towards them ?

• Main Author: Teo, Kah Shun
• Other Authors: Wan Ching
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/70346
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Reading narratives have been thought to provide an indirect contact between groups and thus, changing attitudes. This study explores the effect of reading various descriptions (i.e. mental or physical) or prosocial motives (i.e. empathy-induced altruistic or self-interested egoistic) in written narratives on dehumanizing and xenophobia attitudes towards Bangladeshi workers in Singapore. We concluded through our findings that the combination of mental description and altruistic prosocial motive is most effective at lowering implicit xenophobia. Other findings suggest imagery’s moderating the effect of descriptions and prosocial motive on animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization. This study sheds light on the current research on narratives, dehumanization and prejudice and on practical applications from this research.