Explaining the Effects of Vicarious Contact in an Entertainment Television Program about Autism

Zhong, Yuwei

Explaining the Effects of Vicarious Contact in an Entertainment Television Program about Autism

dc.contributor.advisor	Wong, Norman
dc.contributor.author	Zhong, Yuwei
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Leshner, Glenn
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Miller, Claude
dc.date.accessioned	2020-05-08T23:16:28Z
dc.date.available	2020-05-08T23:16:28Z
dc.date.issued	2020
dc.date.manuscript	2020-05-08
dc.description.abstract	This study is designed to further examine the mechanisms behind vicarious intergroup contact and the effect of exposure to a narrative about an autistic individual on reducing intergroup prejudice towards an autistic population. Based on the vicarious contact hypotheses (e.g., Mazziotta et al., 2011), social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), and narrative persuasion (e.g., Moyer‐Gusé et al., 2017), three hypotheses are proposed that consider the role of identification, self-efficacy, intergroup anxiety, and perceived positive valence of contact in reducing intergroup prejudice towards autistic individuals and increasing willingness to engage in future contact with autistic individuals. An online experiment was conducted using a video clip from a television program featuring interactions between an autistic character and non-autistic characters (experimental condition), and a clip from a TED talk on the topic of autism (control condition) as the stimuli to test the hypotheses. It was expected that the results from the experiment reveal that vicarious contact with an autistic character increases one’s perceptions of self-efficacy, reduces intergroup prejudice towards autistic individuals, and increases willingness to engage in future contact with autistic individuals. The results, their implications, limitations, and future research directions were discussed in connection with the vicarious contact hypotheses, social cognitive theory, narrative persuasion, and the findings of previous literature.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/11244/324361
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.rights	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Mass Communication	en_US
dc.subject	Autism Spectrum Disorder	en_US
dc.subject	Intergroup Prejudice	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Master of Arts	en_US
dc.title	Explaining the Effects of Vicarious Contact in an Entertainment Television Program about Autism	en_US
ou.group	College of Arts and Sciences::Department of Communication	en_US