The Effects of Felt Understanding and Perspective Taking on Intergroup Relations

This project aims to investigate the interaction between the effects of felt understanding (i.e. feeling like an outgroup member understands you) and perspective taking (i.e. "putting yourself in someone else's shoes") on intergroup relations. Specifically, this will be in the context of intergenerational relations as participants will be 18-to-30-years-old and the study will involve their relationship with over 50-year-olds. This research will involve a 2 (high vs low felt understanding) x 2 (high vs low perspective taking) design, where participants will be randomised to one of the 4 conditions. This project will involve an online survey. Participants will read a fake news article which promotes either high felt understanding or low felt understanding (i.e. felt misunderstanding) depending on the experimental condition. Participants will then be asked to write a short passage about the typical day of someone over 50 (i.e. an outgroup member) with additional instructions which promote either high perspective taking or low perspective taking depending on the experimental condition. In order to assess the efficacy of the felt understanding and perspective taking manipulations, all participants will then answer questions regarding felt understanding and perspective taking. Finally, all participants will answer questions regarding their attitudes towards the outgroup and action intentions towards the outgroup. We expect participants assigned to the high felt understanding conditions to have more positive attitudes and action intentions than participants assigned to the low felt understanding conditions, and we expect participants assigned to the high perspective taking conditions to have more positive attitudes and action intentions than participants assigned to the low perspective taking conditions. Additionally, we expect high felt understanding to have a stronger positive effect on attitudes and action intentions compared to low felt understanding when there is high perspective taking compared to low perspective taking. This research has implications for the development of interventions which aim to improve intergroup relations using felt understanding by suggesting whether perspective taking enhances the effects of felt understanding on intergroup relations and therefore whether further research on such interventions that also promote perspective taking should be done.