Exploring the Role of Racial and Ethnic Socialization in
Virtual Reality (VR) Narratives
by Danielle Marie Olson
B.S., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014)
Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
February 2019
© 2019 Danielle Marie Olson. All rights reserved.
The author hereby grants to M.I.T. permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole and in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.
Author ...... Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science January 30, 2019
Certified by...... D. Fox Harrell Professor of Digital Media and Artificial Intelligence, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Thesis Supervisor
Accepted by ...... Leslie A. Kolodziejski Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Chair, Department Committee on Graduate Students
2 Exploring the Role of Racial and Ethnic Socialization in Virtual
Reality (VR) Narratives
by Danielle Marie Olson
Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science on January 30, 2019 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract
Race and ethnicity impact a number of experiences in the physical world, most of which are seldom modeled in virtual worlds. Even when race and ethnicity are taken into account for the design and implementation of characters and avatars, they are often only thought of as graphical customizations (e.g., skin color). This approach to the virtual representation of race and ethnicity lacks the depth necessary to meaningfully engage players from a wide range of identity backgrounds in transformational virtual storytelling experiences.
Towards the goal of improving approaches to virtual race and ethnicity representation, this thesis proposes a new computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) for the design and implementation of interactive VR narrative games. The key contributions of this thesis include the development of interactive VR narrative game called Passage Home VR and the results and analysis of a user study evaluating this videogame system. Central to Passage Home VR is an interactive narrative model steered by body language driven game mechanics and a novel embedded computational model of RES theory. The upshot is that this approach resulted in an engaging narrative system successfully conveying themes grounded in a social science model of how individuals cope with racial discrimination. The user study investigated how players interpreted the narrative experience and their strategies and decision-making using a body language driven interaction mechanism to respond to this racialized encounter.
In summary, this research investigates: (1) how players’ racial and ethnic socialization (RES) influences in-game behavior and how they experience emotions, perceive characters, themes, and events in VR narratives, (2) how RES can be computationally modeled to support virtual race and ethnicity representation, compelling interactive narrative storytelling, and potentially to social scientific research, and (3) how body language can be used to inform the design of interaction mechanics in interactive VR narratives simulating social phenomena.
Thesis Supervisor: D. Fox Harrell Title: Professor of Digital Media and Artificial Intelligence, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
3 Contents
Acknowledgements ...... 6
Figures and Tables ...... 7
1 Introduction ...... 10 1.1 Motivation: Identity Representation in Videogames and VR ...... 11
1.1.1 The State of Race and Ethnicity in Videogames ...... 11 1.1.2 The State of Race and Ethnicity in VR ...... 14
1.2 Thesis Overview ...... 15
2 Theoretical Framework: Racial and Ethnic Identity Representation in VR . . . . 18
2.1 Race and Ethnicity ...... 18 2.1.1 Defining Race and Ethnicity ...... 19 2.1.1.1 Racial and Ethnic Majority and Minorities ...... 20
2.1.2 Racial and Ethnic Classification ...... 22 2.1.2.1 U.S. Racial and Ethnic Classification Labels ...... 24 2.1.2.2 Racial-Ethnic Classification and Bias...... 28 2.1.3 Racial and Ethnic Identity ...... 33 2.1.3.1 Internal and External Racial-Ethnic Identification. . . . 34 2.1.3.2 Racial and Ethnic Identity Development...... 38 2.1.4 Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES) ...... 41 2.1.4.1 RES Themes and Coping Strategies ...... 42 2.1.5 Virtual Representations of Race and Ethnicity ...... 45 2.1.5.1 Defining Avatars ...... 46 2.1.5.2 Player-Avatar Relationships ...... 46
2.1.5.3 Box Effects ...... 48 2.1.5.4 Race and Ethnicity Representation in Games ...... 49
2.2 Virtual Reality, Gaming, and Social Issues ...... 51 2.2.1 Virtual Reality Design ...... 51
2.2.1.1 Embodied Identity Representation ...... 52 2.2.2 Serious and Impact Games ...... 54 2.2.3 Interactive Media Addressing Social Issues ...... 55 2.3 Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) ...... 57 2.3.1 Gestural Interface Design ...... 58 2.3.1.1 Gestural HCI Application Domains ...... 59 2.3.1.2 Enabling Technologies ...... 61 2.3.1.3 System Response Technologies ...... 63 2.3.1.4 Gesture Styles ...... 64 2.3.2 Gestural HCI in Interactive Narrative ...... 65
3 Passage Home VR Design and Implementation ...... 68 3.1 Design Approach for Passage Home VR ...... 68 3.1.1 About EMBRace ...... 69 3.1.2 Narrative and System Design Process ...... 72 3.1.2.1 Brainstorming ...... 75
4 3.1.2.2 Physical Prototype and Presentation ...... 81 3.2 Passage Home VR Prototype Overview ...... 84 3.2.1 Description of Passage Home VR ...... 84
3.2.1.1 Narrative Engine ...... 85 3.2.2 Technical Implementation ...... 94 3.2.2.1 Player Experience ...... 94 3.2.2.2 System Interaction and UI Design ...... 96
4 Passage Home VR User Study ...... 99 4.1 User Study Participants and Procedure ...... 99 4.1.1 Participants ...... 99 4.1.2 Procedure ...... 101 4.1.2.1 Racial Bias Preparation Scale (RBPS) ...... 104
4.1.2.2 Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) ...... 104
4.1.2.3 In-Game Screen Capture ...... 105
4.1.2.4 Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) ...... 106
4.1.2.5 System Usability Scale (SUS) ...... 106 4.1.2.6 Semi-Structured Interview ...... 107 4.2 User Study Results and Analysis ...... 108 4.2.1 System Usability and Experience Results ...... 108 4.2.2 Behavioral and Social Science Results ...... 111 4.2.2.1 Racial Bias Preparation Scale (RBPS) ...... 112 4.2.2.2 Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) ...... 113 4.2.2.3 In-Game Screen Capture ...... 114
4.2.2.4 Emergent Themes from Semi-Structured Interview . . . 116
4.2.2.5 Players’ RES Backgrounds ...... 129
4.2.2.6 Players’ In-Game Behavior ...... 133 4.2.2.7 Perceptions of Evidence of Racial Discrimination . . . . 137
4.2.2.8 Players’ Narrative Analyses ...... 140 4.2.2.9 Players’ Interpretations of Body Language ...... 142
5 Conclusion ...... 147 5.1 Findings and Discussion ...... 147 5.1.1 Players’ Overall Game Experience ...... 148 5.1.2 Players’ RES and In-Game Behavior and Interpretations ...... 149 5.1.2.1 Players’ RES Backgrounds ...... 149 5.1.2.2 Players’ In-Game Behavior ...... 150 5.1.2.3 Players’ Narrative Analyses ...... 153 5.2 Future Work and Acknowledgements ...... 154 5.2.1 Future Work ...... 155
5.2.2 Concluding Reflections ...... 157 5.2.3 Passage Home VR Acknowledgements ...... 158
Appendix ...... 159
Bibliography ...... 177
5 Acknowledgements
I dedicate this thesis all the black girls who have ever had their abilities doubted. May you defy all who lack faith in your strengths and talents. May you walk fearlessly into the big, beautiful future of your wildest dreams.
*
With warmth and gratitude, I would like to express my appreciation to these professors for their invaluable advice, mentorship, and inspiration throughout this entire process:
Dr. D. Fox Harrell Professor, Digital Media and Artificial Intelligence Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson Assistant Professor, Health Behaviors and Health Education School of Public Health University of Michigan
*
I express my deepest love and thanks to my mother Léontine, my father Paul, my sisters Lehla and Paula, and my brother Matthew: There are not enough words to express my gratitude for the sacrifices you have made, and your unconditional love and support through my highest highs and lowest lows. Without each of you, I would not be here today.
*
To Professor Leslie Kolodziejski and Dean Gloria Anglón: Your authenticity, nurturing presence, and tireless dedication to students have kept me going since day one of my graduate school experience. Thank you for always being there for me and pushing me to always strive forward.
*
To my number one supporter, my husband, Phil: you have been an unwavering source of patience, encouragement, and love through every chapter of my journey here. Thank you for always seeing my potential. You are my best friend, and I love you with all of my heart.
*
Finally, I give thanks and praise to my Higher Power for the unconditional love, wisdom, and strength which has sustained me, guided me, and helped me to learn and grow every single day.
6 Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 1: Screenshot from Passage Home VR ...... 16
Figure 2: Total U.S. population by number of races between 2000 to 2010 ...... 28
Figure 3: Categories of and relationships among racial microaggressions ...... 31
Figure 4: Coping strategies inventory (CSI) ...... 44
Figure 5: Blended-identity diagram ...... 48
Figure 6: Gesture based HCI taxonomy ...... 59
Figure 7: Possible narrative storyline branches in Passage Home VR ...... 92
Figure 8: User study participant demographics ...... 101
Figure 9: User study setup using swivel chair and smartphone HMD...... 102
Figure 10: Histogram of participants’ SUS results ...... 109
Figure 11: Participant GEQ core and social presence module results ...... 110
Figure 12: Participant RBPS results ...... 112
Figure 13: Participant CoBRAS results ...... 113
Figure 14: Distribution of participants’ self-reported RES ...... 131
Figure 15: Distribution of participants’ self-reported RES by race ...... 132
Figure 16: Participants’ final identity categories for playthroughs 1 and 2 ...... 135
Figure 17: Final identity categories by players’ RES for playthrough 1 ...... 136
Figure 18: Final identity categories by players’ RES for playthrough 2 ...... 137
Figure 19: Perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination ...... 139
7 Figure 20: Perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination by players’ RES ...... 139
Figure 21: Players’ thematic narrative analyses...... 141
Figure 22: Players’ thematic narrative analyses by RES ...... 142
Tables
Table 1: U.S. Census race categories from 1970 – 2010 ...... 25
Table 2: Key terms and definitions of racism, prejudice, and discrimination ...... 29
Table 3: Summary of stages of racial identity development ...... 38
Table 4: Emergent themes of RES practices in the U.S...... 43
Table 5: Techniques for gestural HCI in VR and AR ...... 60
Table 6: Non-perceptual and perceptual input technologies for gestural HCI ...... 61
Table 7: System responses to gestural interactions ...... 64
Table 8: HCI Gesture styles ...... 65
Table 9: Effective indexical relationships for gesture-driven interactive narratives . . . . 66
Table 10: EMBRace program schedule ...... 70
Table 11: Steps for a playcentric design process ...... 74
Table 12: Story resources which contributed to narrative design ...... 77
Table 13: Core design decisions for creative vision of narrative storyline ...... 79
Table 14: Sample assets used for early playtest of Passage Home VR ...... 82
Table 15: Identity representation model implemented in Passage Home VR ...... 85
Table 16: Examples of category-based narrative content styles in Passage Home VR . . . . . 88
Table 17: Passage Home VR body language selection interface ...... 95
8 Table 18: Passage Home VR gaze and click interactions ...... 96
Table 19: Summary of validated survey instruments used in user study ...... 103
Table 20: In-Game player behavior and outcomes in Passage Home VR ...... 114
Table 21: Emergent themes from semi-structured interview data analysis ...... 117
9 Chapter 1
Introduction
As the applications and audiences of videogames1 in society continue to grow more diverse in a media-saturated culture [1], so grows “the need to reimagine the Avatar Dream where the potential social and cultural impacts of virtual identities are considered intrinsic to the engineering practices of inventing them” [2].
This thesis addresses the virtual representation of race and ethnicity in particular, drawing inspiration from the social sciences to develop a computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) [3] to support nuanced simulation of sociocultural identity phenomena in videogames. Towards these goals, this research presents the results and analysis of a user study evaluating the efficacy of an embedded RES model with body language driven interaction for engaging virtual storytelling. The study investigated how players’ RES contributed to their in-game behavior and interpretations of Passage Home VR, an immersive virtual reality (VR) narrative game which was developed using this model.
Before presenting the major outcomes of this thesis, it is important to demonstrate why considering racial and ethnic representation in videogames is a topic of major importance.
First, this chapter motivates this research by highlighting the issues faced by diverse
1 The terms videogame, game, and computer game are used in ways that are synonymous in this thesis unless otherwise specified.
10 videogame players due to current limitations of virtual identity representations in games and VR applications.
1.1 Motivation: Identity Representation in Videogames
and VR
Videogames and VR are important media forms that are, respectively, pervasive and increasing in popularity. As such, it is important to consider the state of identity representations such as characters and avatars within them and whether they serve the needs and values of diverse users.
1.1.1 The State of Race and Ethnicity in Videogames
As the popularity and capabilities of computer and video games have steadily grown for the past several decades in the United States – and across every continent – the divide between videogame players and non-videogame players has steadily grown smaller [4].
These shifting demographics of videogame players is a remarkable departure from narrow media representations of the stereotypical videogame player (e.g., “otaku” stereotypes), and this growing engagement with and acceptance of games as a source of positive influence and learning has led to the application of games beyond entertainment contexts, such as classrooms and professional settings.
11 Nevertheless, characters and avatars within games are statistically predominantly white and male (89.55% of primary characters in videogames are male, as compared to the 49.1% of actual males in the U.S. census; 80.05% of videogame characters are white, as compared to 75.1% of actual white people in the U.S. census) [5]. Representations of other identities often fall short of adequately serving the needs of the diverse actual demographics of videogame players for a variety of reasons, technical social, and psychological. This highlights the important new opportunities and challenges for game developers and marketers to engage with an increasingly diverse audience.
Central to the challenges of connecting with diverse videogame players is lack of representation within the game development industry and within the games themselves.
Game developers are 88.5% male, 83.3% white, and the majority are between the ages of
20 and 40 [6], and character representation within games reflect this systematic social inequality within the games industry. One might expect to find that the number of female characters in videogames (14.77%) should reflect the number of female videogame players
(38%) overall. In reality, it is closer to the number of female game developers (11.5%) within the industry. An exception to this phenomenon is that black people are far more represented in games (10.74%) than they are within the games industry (2%) [5, 6].
However, researchers have found that “outside of sports games, the representation of
African Americans drops precipitously, with many of the remaining featured as gangsters and street people [such as] in Grand Theft Auto and 50 Cent Bulletproof” [5] which problematically reinforce and perpetuate negative racial stereotypes.
12 Everett and Watkins [7] refer to the ways in which games heavily rely upon racist discourses, attitudes, and assumptions which are dominant in popular and mainstream culture within interactive games as racialized pedagogical zones (RPZs). They elucidate the ways that “video games teach not only entrenched ideologies of race and racism, but also how gameplay’s pleasure principles of mastery, winning, and skills development are often inextricably tied to and defined by familiar racial and ethnic stereotypes” [7]. An examination of videogame representations of black people finds that the majority of these representations are male. The marginalization of women, particularly women of color, in videogames is reinforced by the representations which feature women “as props, bystanders, eye candy, and prizes to be won by the male protagonists,” noting that “black women and Latinas are also portrayed quite casually as sexually available bystanders in fighter games like Def Jam Vendetta and as streetwalking prostitutes in action/adventure/shooter games like GTA: Vice City” [7].
Despite the effort many game development studios have given to diversify representations and meet the demands of their consumers, many multicultural videogame players still feel that videogame characters underrepresent certain groups [8]:
• 65% of LGBT videogame players and 28% of heterosexual videogame players do
not feel all sexual orientations have ample representation among video game
characters
• Almost 50% of Asian-American videogame players believe all races are not well
represented in gaming character options
13 • 57% of female and 51% of male videogame players do not believe all genders are
amply included in video game characters
If left unaddressed, these troubling statistics will propagate the social and psychological consequences of lack of meaningful identification as video games become more ubiquitous across the sites were we live, work, and play. These issues motivate the research questions investigated by this thesis, which presents work completed towards responding to them.
1.1.2 The State of Race and Ethnicity in VR
Since Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR in 2014, innovation, growth, and excitement around virtual reality (VR) has steadily increased. Although high-end VR and dedicated spaces for room-scale VR remain inaccessible to many, within just the five years of the acquisition of Oculus, consumer VR became more accessible with the introduction of
Google Daydream and Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Sony’s PlayStation VR, [9] and, most recently, the Oculus Go. With this growing popularity and availability of VR technology, designers and developers of VR content must consider shifts in the cultural diversity of end users as well as unexpected applications of this young technology.
Since the landmark “rubber hand illusion” experiment which used a mirror technique to induce the “transfer” of the subject’s consciousness into the avatar [10], the application of immersive VR technology for fostering emotional engagement, shifting user perspectives, and developing compassion and empathy for others using techniques for body transfer has
14 obtained a great vogue in the last decade. However, existing VR empathy applications commonly use shallow models of identity representations which only afford appearance- based customization to users. This approach loses out on the opportunity to leverage the unique affordances of VR technology for embodied interaction.
Using VR to simply take on the body of someone of a different social identity background limits the potential of this medium for enabling players to more meaningfully understand and develop empathy for others’ experiences. The development of critical embodied identity representations must be grounded in a nuanced sociocultural understanding of how identity shapes the lived experiences of individuals. Towards these endeavors, the critical design and implementation of embodied identity representations – that is, computational representations of social identities in the first, second, and third person within immersive VR experiences – is central to the quality of these experiences and their potential for positive social change. This research focuses on how RES theory can be applied to the development of more effective virtual identity representations in VR narratives.
1.2 Thesis Overview
This thesis contributes theory and technology informing the design of racial and ethnic embodied identity representations in interactive VR narrative systems, challenging problematic representations of race and ethnicity in gaming spaces such that games can
15 serve as tools for the cultural resistance and empowerment of videogame players. Chapter
2 establishes a theoretical framework informed by sociology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction for the critical development of embodied racial and ethnic identity representations. Next, the design approach for the development of an interactive VR narrative entitled Passage Home VR is presented, followed by the results and analysis of a user study evaluating its efficacy for compelling virtual storytelling. In Passage Home VR, players take on the role of an African American teenager who must respond to false allegations of plagiarism by her teacher on an important essay she turned in. The player drives the narrative experience through gaze and click interactions, selecting predefined choices of body language for their player character to respond to the narrative prompts. A screenshot from this interactive VR narrative is shown in Figure 1.
16 Figure 1: Screenshot from Passage Home VR. In this videogame, players take the role of an
African American student who must respond to her teacher’s accusations of plagiarism.
In terms of evaluation, the study examined the usability and effectiveness of Passage
Home VR for player engagement and immersion, players’ RES experiences while growing up, and their interpretations of the story, characters, and themes within the experience.
It also investigated players’ present-day views about racial and ethnic representation in media and their in-game strategies for choosing body language responses. This thesis contributes a novel computational model of racial and ethnic identity representation informed by RES theory and examines the relationship between players’ RES experiences and their cognitive, affective and behavioral responses to interactive VR experiences themed around issues of racial and ethnic discrimination. The initial results suggest a significant relationship between players’ RES and their in-game behavior and narrative interpretations, potentially providing a more nuanced understanding of these outcomes than simply considering players’ race, ethnicity, or gender categories alone.
17 Chapter 2
Theoretical Framework: Racial and Ethnic Identity
Representation in VR
This chapter establishes a critical race theory (CRT) [11] framework for the design and implementation of racial and ethnic identity representations in immersive VR systems.
First, this chapter explores the ambiguous nature of defining race and ethnicity categories through an assessment of the history of the U.S. census. Various forms of social stigmas and biases resulting from the social ascription of race and ethnicity are then defined. Next, it defines several models of racial and ethnic identity formation and the RES practices which influence this formation process. Finally, existing approaches to developing race and ethnicity representations, virtual storytelling experiences which address complex social phenomena, and the use of gestural HCI in immersive systems and interactive narrative are examined. By reviewing literature across social and cognitive science, game studies, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence, this chapter establishes an interdisciplinary foundation for the development of Passage Home VR, a body language driven interactive VR narrative addressing racial discrimination.
2.1 Race and Ethnicity
18 This section presents definitions of race and ethnicity, a historical review of racial and ethnic classification systems in the U.S., theoretical frameworks of racial and ethnic socialization, and models for racial and ethnic identity development. Finally, existing approaches to computational representations of racial and ethnic identity are examined from a CRT perspective. This literature is reviewed to establish a foundation for better understanding the socio-technical gap between what is socially understood about race and ethnicity in the physical world, and the challenges to fully supporting these concepts in virtual worlds.
2.1.1 Defining Race and Ethnicity
Modern sociologists typically consider race to be a socially constructed category that is not rooted in biology, but based on “social ideas about what it means to belong to one race group versus another,” [12]. This can be demonstrated with the example of racial classifications codified by the U.S. census throughout American history, for which group membership definitions have changed due to societal shifts, rather than actual changes in groups. Although commonly conflated with race, “ethnicity refers to a social category of people who share a common culture,” while pan-ethnicity refers to “a group that is comprised of a multitude of ethnicities” and may comprise of a diverse variation of peoples
[12]. Further distinction is made by sociologists between two manifestations of ethnic identity. Garcia-Alexander et al. define situational ethnicity as “when a person chooses
19 whether to assert some aspect of their identity or heritage in a particular context … [such as the choices to] reveal or hide their identity or heritage on a job application” and symbolic ethnicity as “when a person has fully assimilated into the dominant culture, and only participates in ethnic customs on special occasions … [such as the choice to] actively claim their heritage as Irish on St. Patrick’s Day” or during vacations to foreign countries
[12].
Situational and symbolic ethnicity feature a great degree of choice, which can be contrasted to the tension between the internal identification and external ascription that often exists for individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups (defined in the next section). For these individuals, “identity is heavily ascribed by society … especially the case for individuals who have ‘markers’ that associate them with a particular racial and/or ethnic group” (e.g., skin color, surnames, accents) [13, 14].
2.1.1.1 Racial and Ethnic Majority and Minorities
Discussions of race and ethnicity and identity politics often raise issues of the historical trajectories of power and privilege in the United States. Dominant culture2 can be defined as the majority group within a society holding more political, social, and economic power than other groups. In contrast to the dominant group culture, racial and ethnic minority groups can be defined as “those who (1) experience exclusion from the dominant group,
2 Dominant culture is used in this thesis to refer to historical oppression, rather than an indication that cultures from underrepresented or oppressed groups are less powerful in a philosophical sense.
20 (2) membership is ascribed (i.e., not by choice) rather than achieved, and (3) the members feel a sense of community” [12]. Within the U.S., the dominant cultural group was initially constituted by Anglo-descended white, middle-class, Protestant people. However, social constructs of whiteness have changed through both assimilation (the integration of prominent features of non-dominant cultural groups being integrated into the dominant group culture) and accommodation (acceptance of certain features of non-dominant cultural groups by the dominant group culture), various cultural groups have been conferred privilege over time in American History (e.g., historical shifts in privilege and power of Polish-, Italian- and Jewish-American people in the late 1700s and early 1800s).
Many scholars in the last several decades have sought to “[reverse] conventional patterns of markedness to foreground what typically remains unnamed and implicit” and “[make] visible the nonsalient racial structuring of white experience” [15]. The effort to discursively and formally “deconstruct and racialize ‘whiteness’ produces fascinating and useful testimony about conflicting power relations among race, class, gender, and sexuality” [16].
Although the U.S. encompasses a vast array of racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups and seeks to idealistically embody values of meritocracy and freedom of expression, there still remains a problematic endorsement of belief in race- and ethnicity-based differences in humans (i.e., intelligence, criminality, musical taste or talent, sports ability, etc.) within political and social institutions. This has led to the division and disenfranchisement of various groups throughout this country’s history. Given the history of relationships between dominant and ethnic minority groups in the United States, it is important to
21 devote epistemological attention to how racial and ethnic categorization shapes the lives of individuals belonging to both majority and minority groups. The next section explores the history of the U.S. census racial and ethnic classification systems, and the risks of marginalization resulting from these classification systems. A more nuanced understanding of the ways social identity phenomena such as racial discrimination and bias impact the lived experiences of individuals can inform the development of more empowering virtual identity representations, such as the identity model embedded in Passage Home VR.
2.1.2 Racial and Ethnic Classification
Videogame systems often implement racial and ethnic identity representations in the virtual world which reflect racial and ethnic classification systems established in the physical world. However, racial and ethnic classification systems in the U.S. have a history of contributing to social prejudices and biases which especially impact the lives of racial and ethnic minorities. By relying on these classification systems, these issues may persist into the virtual world. This research seeks to develop an approach which acknowledges these pitfalls and applies a more critical and humanizing lens to support identity expression in virtual worlds.
Bowker and Star [17] define classification systems as a “a set of boxes (metaphorical or literal) into which things can be put to then do some kind of work- bureaucratic or knowledge production.” They identified ideal systems of classification to theoretically meet
22 three criteria: having (1) consistent, unique classificatory principles based on a principle of ordering, (2) mutually exclusive categories, and (3) completeness achieved through total coverage of the described domain. In practice, however, real-world classification infrastructures often fall short of these ideals. In an examination of the contradictory systems of the apartheid classification of race in South Africa, they noted the “refusal of
‘race’ to fit the desired classification system stubborned [sic] by its pro-Apartheid designers” [17]. They termed torque to describe “cases where the lives of individuals are broken, twisted, and torqued by their encounters with classification systems” during the process of metrication [17].
Their analysis queried these systems and raised the moral issues of ignoring certain points of view and favoring others in categorical discourse, looking at the epistemological, political, and ethical risks of ignoring these issues in the development of technological and electronic infrastructures. The narrative featured in Passage Home VR centralizes the consequences of torque in educational institutions, challenging players to cope with the experience of reconciling externally and internally perceived racial identity. This experience of internal-external identity reconciliation has been termed “double consciousness” by W.E.B. DuBois [18]:
“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton
and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,
and gifted with second-sight in this American world, —a world
which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see
23 himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar
sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at
one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the
tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One
ever feels his twoness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, —
this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double
self into a better and truer self.”
– The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois [18]
With the hazards of these internal-external tensions in mind, the next section presents a brief review of racial and ethnic classification infrastructures in the U.S. using empirical evidence from the history of the U.S. Census, then illustrates the implications of classification on racial and ethnic identity-based discrimination in social contexts.
2.1.2.1 U.S. Racial and Ethnic Classification Labels
Passage Home VR proposes a new approach to racial and ethnic identity representation that goes beyond simply replicating existing label-based classification systems of racial and ethnic identity in virtual worlds. This section first establishes an understanding of existing racial and ethnic classification systems (using the U.S. census as an example) and
24 how these classification systems have contributed to racial biases in society to demonstrate the limitations of this approach.
The conceptualization, operationalization, and interpretation of racial and ethnic category labels in the U.S. census have a complex history of subjective, varied, and ambiguous classification approaches developed in response to political, social, and legal events [19,
20, 21, 22, 23]. The implicit nature of approaches to the classification of its population is underscored by the fact that “the U.S. government and, more specifically, the U.S. Census
Bureau, which is responsible for counting people by race, do not have a single criterion or principle to determine different races” [24]. Rather, they rely upon combinations of factors including “national origin, tribal affiliation and membership, and physical characteristics”
[25] which are inconsistently applied across different groups [26]. Table 1 presents the changes to the U.S. census categories over time, including the consideration of race and ethnicity as separate concepts [25, 27] and the use of different terminology to refer to racial and ethnic groups.
Table 1: U.S. Census race categories from 1970 – 2010 from the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget Classification Standards [27]. Additional notes which expand upon the history of these
labels can be found in Appendix I.
Year U.S. Census Race Categories 1790 1800 Slaves; Free White Females & Males; All Other Free Persons 1810
25 1820 1830 Slaves, Free Colored Persons; Free White Females & Males; All Other Free Persons 1840
1850 Black, Mulatto; White
1860 1870 Indian; Chinese1; Black, Mulatto; White 1880
1890 Indian; Chinese, Japanese; Black, Mulatto, Quadroon, Octoroon; White
1900 Indian; Chinese, Japanese; Black (Negro or of Negro Descent); White
1910 Indian; Chinese, Japanese; Black (Negro), Mulatto; White; Other Indian; Chinese, Filipino, Hindu2, Japanese, Korean; Black (Negro), 1920 Mulatto; White; Other Indian; Chinese, Filipino, Hindu, Japanese, Korean; Negro; Mexican3; 1930 White; Other Indian; Chinese, Filipino, Hindu, Japanese, Korean; Negro; White; 1940 Other American Indian4; Chinese, Filipino, Japanese; Negro; Mexican; White; 1950 Other
Aleut, American Indian, Eskimo5; Chinese, Filipino, Japanese; Negro; 1960 Hawaiian, Part-Hawaiian6; White
Indian (Amer.)7; Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean; Negro or Black8; 1970 Origin of Descent: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish; Hawaiian; White; Other
Aleut, Eskimo, Indian (Amer.); Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese; Black or Negro; Spanish/Hispanic 1980 Origin or Descent9: Mexican, Mexican-Am., Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Other Spanish/Hispanic; Hawaiian, Guamanian, Samoan; White; Other
26 Aleut, Eskimo, Indian (Amer.); Asian or Pacific Islander, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Asian Indian, Other Asian or Pacific Islander10; Black or Negro; Spanish/Hispanic Origin or Descent: 1990 Mexican, Mexican-Am., Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Other Spanish/Hispanic10; Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian, Other Asian or Pacific Islander11; White; Other Race
American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Other Asian; Black, African American, or Negro; Spanish/Hispanic/Latino: Mexican, Mexican-Am., Chicano, 2000 Puerto Rican, Cuban, Other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino12; Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro; Samoan, Other Asian or Pacific Islander; White; Some Other Race13
American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Other Asian14; Black, African American, or Negro; Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin15: Mexican, Mexican- 2010 Am., Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin; Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, Other Pacific Islander14; White; Some Other Race16
A central challenge of racial and ethnic classification systems, both in society and in virtual worlds, is reflecting the heterogeneity that exists within racial and ethnic groups.
The rapid increase of multiple heritage populations in the U.S. has more recently foregrounded the ambiguous and shifting boundaries of census classification into public consciousness. Figure 2 provides insight into the changes in distribution of people who self-identified with two or more races across the 2000 and 2010 censuses. For the first time in U.S. history, the 2000 census presented individuals with the option to self-identity with more than one race and in 2010, the data collected was “divided into two broad categories: the race alone population and the Two or More Races population” [28]. This evolution in
27 terminology for self-identification brings to focus the shifting nature of racial and ethnic classification labels, and how physical and virtual world classification systems must respond to changes in how individuals conceptualize race and ethnicity.
Figure 2: Total U.S. population by number of races between 2000 to 2010 [28].
These changes to race and ethnicity classification systems due to shifts in societal conceptions of race demonstrate the discrepancies that often exist between external conceptions versus self-conceptions of racial and ethnic identity. This idea is further explored in the next section by defining various forms and expressions of racial-ethnic discrimination and bias that have resulted from limiting ways in which individuals conceptualize and categorize race and ethnicity in society.
2.1.2.2 Racial-Ethnic Classification and Bias
28 How one’s racial or ethnic identity is perceived and categorized by others can lead to various forms of discrimination, which manifests in cross- racial and ethnic encounters in a myriad of ways, from conscious and explicit to unconscious and passive expressions of bias. Passage Home VR was implemented to dynamically produce narrative content which reflects a range of discriminatory remarks, from covert to more overt statements of racial bias. Table 2 presents key terms and definitions related to concepts of racism, prejudice, discrimination, and cultural competence. These identity phenomena are computationally modeled and explored through interactive narrative in Passage Home VR and systems influencing its design, such as Mimesis (a videogame modeling racial microaggessions)
[29]. Figure 3 provides a model for better understanding aversive racism through an empirically-based taxonomy of racial microaggressions, which are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or· unintentional, that communicate- hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group” [30].
Table 2: Key terms and definitions of racism, prejudice, and discrimination [12].
Key Term Definition Encompasses prejudice and discrimination; the belief that one’s Racism own group is superior to others and provides support for discriminatory practices. Intentional and/or obvious harmful attitudes or behaviors Overt Racism reflecting a belief that some groups are biologically inferior.
29 Belief that some groups are culturally inferior. Symbolic racism is characterized as disguised and subtle( rather than public or Covert/Symbolic obvious), yet persistent stereotyping and a tendency to argue Racism that achievement gaps are the result of problems inherent to some groups. More indirect and subtle form of racism that characterizes the racial attitudes of those who may not self-identify as racist, yet Aversive Racism persistently avoid interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. The avoidance of racial language in an effort to suggest racism is Colorblind not an issue, and that racial privilege no longer exists, yet Racism endorsing behavior which supports racialized structures and practices.
Encompasses the attitudes about the character and ability of Prejudice certain groups.
An oversimplified set of beliefs about members of various Stereotype minority groups.
A characteristic or trait that sets people apart from others and Stigma results in social disapproval.
Discrimination Unequal/differential treatment of people or groups.
Individual, Unequal treatment reflected in interactions between two or more Interpersonal people. Discrimination Practices that are built into the structure of a society and act in Institutional a systematic way to create barriers and unequal access to Discrimination services. The ability of individuals and systems to respond respectfully and effectively to people of all cultures, classes, races, ethnic Cultural backgrounds, and religions in a manner that recognizes, affirms, Competence and values the cultural differences and similarities and the worth of individuals, families, and communities.
30
Figure 3: Categories of and relationships among racial microaggressions [30].
31 As dynamically modeled by the narrative engine of Passage Home VR, expressions of discrimination may range in level of severity and impact. Additionally, different racial and ethnic groups may be more vulnerable to being perpetrators or recipients of specific kinds of bias. Researchers have noted the psychological hazards of feeling subjected to expectations, both positive and negative, about one’s racial and ethnic group. As an example of how “negative” identity stereotypes can affect psychological functioning, Steele and Aronson [31] found that when race was emphasized in a standardized test-taking setting, black college freshmen and sophomores performed comparatively worse than their white counterparts, but performed better and equivalently with white students when race was not emphasized. As an example of how “positive” identity stereotypes can affect psychological functioning, Cheryan and Bodenhausen [32] studied the impact of the common cultural stereotype concerning Asians’ mathematical prowess on academic performance, finding that subtle conditions of ethnicity salience resulted in a diminished ability to concentrate due to the pressure of high expectations. These are just two examples among many which demonstrate the importance of self and cultural awareness to avoid psychologically harmful pitfalls interracial and cross-ethnic interactions. These examples also underscore the gravity and consequences of racial bias in educational settings, which is the context of the narrative in Passage Home VR.
According to Sue et al. [30], “racial identity development appears crucial to ‘documenting the harm microaggressions inflict on people of color’” and individuals becoming more cognizant of their own racial identity can contribute to the process of understanding how
32 they may affect individuals from other racial and ethnic groups. Passage Home VR investigated the ways in which players perceived and responded to a discriminatory racial encounter in a virtual world based on the ways they have been socialized to think about race and ethnicity. To establish an understanding of how individuals differently perceive and respond to experiences of discrimination in the physical world, the next section presents information on the processes of racial and ethnic identity development, which is heavily influenced by RES and fundamental to these perceptions and reactions.
2.1.3 Racial and Ethnic Identity
This research seeks to better understand how players’ in-game behavior and interpretations of Passage Home VR are related to their RES and racial and ethnic identity and socialization. Building upon seminal models of psychosocial and cognitive structural identity development, including the work of Piaget [33], Erikson [34], and
Marcia [35], scholars in the last several decades have developed models and theories to better understand racial and ethnic identity development. This section presents concepts related to the internal and external processes of racial and ethnic identification, and several theoretical models for understanding the racial identity development of people of color, biracial people, and white people in the U.S. which are grounded in psychosocial and cognitive structural theory.
33 2.1.3.1 Internal and External Racial-Ethnic Identification
Although an individual may self-categorize into a certain racial or ethnic group, this does not necessitate uniformity with regards to their level of identification with, sense of belonging to, and participation in the practices and traditions of that group. Racial and ethnic identity models in videogames which assume homogeneity in the identification of individuals in groups result in limiting representations which often rely on stereotypes.
Levels of self-identification may vary considerably between individuals classified within the same racial or ethnic group. This can be demonstrated, for example, by contrasting individuals belonging to the same religious cultural group. An individual who identifies them self as belonging to the Roman Catholic religious group may have been brought up in an interfaith home, they may only attend church on certain holidays, and they may hold beliefs contrary to specific stances of the Catholic church. As a result, their level of identification as being Catholic may contrast significantly with an individual who attended Catholic school their entire life, strictly adheres to the beliefs of the Catholic church, and attends service twice a week. In this example, both individuals identify with the same religious group, but their unique levels of self-identification with that group may range from “Christmas and Easter Catholic” or “Contemporary Catholic” to “Traditionalist
Catholic” or “Evangelical Catholic.”
The processes of racial and ethnic identity development characterize the explorations of the adolescents’ membership in a racial or ethnic group [36], a transformational process which is “influenced by those in a particular individual’s ethnic group as well as those
34 outside it, and [acknowledge] ethnocentric and multicultural frames” [37]. Ethnic identity development may “include rituals, symbols, and behavior that manifest themselves from underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions” [38]. The process by which individuals locate themselves within a racialized society are impacted by “racial definitions [which] are both external (what others think) and internal (what the subject thinks)” which has been conceptualized as “‘imputed versus self-defined race’ or ‘objective versus subjective’ definitions of race” [39].
In American society, race and ethnicity is often interpreted from a relativist perspective which judges individuals in contrast to the standards of white American culture.
Consequently, individuals’ racial and ethnic group membership are appraised for
“authenticity” through the proxies of contrasting visible markers (e.g., hair texture, facial features, skin color, style of dress) and behavioral cues, often rooted in race- and ethnicity- based stereotypes (e.g., use of vernacular, academic achievement, dance ability), in contrast to white American “norms.” Despite the nuanced and expansive ways in which racial and ethnic identity may be expressed, the overreliance upon visual and behavioral stereotypes enforced in relation to normative cultural values may result in pressure felt by individuals to exist in the world in relation to stereotypical paragons of their race or ethnicity. These approaches and resulting pressures are often replicated within mainstream virtual identity representations used in videogames. Thus, individuals are faced with negotiating how others perceive and assume their identity, their personal and
35 social identification, and their ways of enacting identity to move fluidly among racial groups in face of social pressures.
Skin color, or the presence or absence of melanin, is arguably one of the most salient features upon which people in the U.S. have relied to assume the biological ancestry of individuals. The oversimplified and unscientific concept of linking geographic region to skin color results in four color groups: “black (Africa), white (Europe), red (North
America), and yellow (Asia),” a system that endorses the idea that “what makes a person
‘white’ is the absence of any ‘black’ or nonwhite blood, and what makes a person ‘black’ is the presence of ‘black’ blood” [39]. The mythical construct of whiteness as “pure” and the norm (distinguished from the “potent” or “polluted” blood of those with black ancestry) is referred to as hypodescent or the “one-drop rule” [20, 23, 39, 40, 41].
A manifestation of the “white” and “non-white” polarity can be observed in the 1850 census which proposed the “color” categories of white, black, and mulatto to mark the “degree of removal from pure white and black races” [42]. Piper [43] recounts in detail how this white- black polarity has pervaded her everyday life experiences as very light-skinned black woman. She recounts experiences of passing, defined as the notion that people of non- white descent can “pass” as white due to the reliance of skin color as social markers of race and ethnicity, sometimes leading to individuals’ social and structural access to privileges they may not otherwise enjoy:
“As an undergraduate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I attended an urban
university to which I walked daily through a primarily black working-class
36 neighborhood. Once a black teenaged youth called to me, "Hey, white girl!
Give me a quarter!" I was feeling strong that day, so I retorted, "I'm not
white and I don't have a quarter!" He answered skeptically, "You sure look
white! You sure act white!" And I have sometimes met blacks socially who,
as a condition of social acceptance of me, require me to prove my blackness
by passing the Suffering Test: They recount at length their recent
experiences of racism and then wait expectantly, skeptically, for me to
match theirs with mine. Mistaking these situations for a different one in
which an exchange of shared experiences is part of the bonding process, I
instinctively used to comply. But I stopped when I realized that I was in
fact being put through a third degree. I would share some equally
nightmarish experience along similar lines, and would then have it explained
to me why that wasn't really so bad, why it wasn't the same thing at all,
or why I was stupid for allowing it to happen to me. So the aim of these
conversations clearly was not mutual support or commiseration. That came
only after I managed to prove myself by passing the Suffering Test of
blackness (if I did), usually by shouting down or destroying their objections
with logic.
– Passing for White, Passing for Black, Adrian Piper [43]
This is one of many examples demonstrating the contradiction of conflating color or behavior with “evidence of” a person’s race or ethnicity, given the phenotypical and behavioral diversity existing within individual racial and ethnic groups. This example also
37 demonstrates the inherent issues with racial and ethnic identity representations in videogames which solely rely upon skin color customization of avatars or characters.
2.1.3.2 Racial and Ethnic Identity Development
Although no single framework can perfectly capture every unique individual’s passage through stages of racial and ethnic identity development, many scholars have sought to characterize these processes with various models. Although a vast myriad of frameworks exist, Table 3 presents a selection of frameworks focused on the experiences of people of color, biracial people and white people in the U.S. [44]. It is important to note that the models presented in Table 3 are by no means exhaustive of all racial identity development models, that no single model can perfectly describe everyone’s lived experiences, and finally, that authors of these models acknowledge these stages may be cyclical or revisited throughout one’s lifetime.
Table 3: Summary of stages of racial identity development [44].
Model Developmental Stages
38 Black 1. Pre-Encounter: Absorbed many beliefs and values of the American dominant white culture, including the notion that “white is Racial Identity, right” and “black is wrong”; de-emphasis on one’s racial group Cross [45, 46] membership; largely unaware of race or racial implications 2. Encounter: Forced by event or series of events to acknowledge the impact of racism in one’s life and the reality that one cannot truly be white; forced to focus on identity as a member of a group targeted by racism 3. Immersion/Emersion: Simultaneous desire to surround oneself with visible symbols of one’s racial identity and an active avoidance of symbols of whiteness; actively seek out opportunities to explore aspects of one’s own history and culture with support of peers from one’s own racial background 4. Internalization: Secure in one’s own sense of racial identity; pro-black attitudes become more expansive, open, and less defensive; willing to establish meaningful relationships with whites who acknowledge and are respective of one’s self- definition 5. Internalization-Commitment: Found ways to translate one’s personal sense of blackness into a plan of action or a general sense of commitment to concerns of blacks as a group, which is sustained over time; comfort with one’s own race and those around them
Biracial 1. Personal Identity: Sense of self unrelated to ethnic Identity, grouping; occurs during childhood Poston [47] 2. Choice of Group: As a result of multiple factors, individuals feel pressured to choose one racial or ethnic group identity over another 3. Categorization: Choices influenced by status of the group, parental influence, cultural knowledge, appearance 4. Enmeshment/Denial: Guilt and confusion about choosing an identity that isn’t fully expressive of all their cultural influences; denial of differences between the racial groupings; possible exploration of the identities that were not chosen in stages 2 and 3 5. Appreciation: of multiple identities 6. Integration: Sense of wholeness, integrating multiple identities
39 Continuum of Does not seek to categorize individuals into a single identity; Biracial acknowledges continuum: Identity Model, • Some people may choose to identify singularly with one of Rockquemore their identities and Laszloffy • Some may blend with a primary emphasis on one identity and [48] a secondary emphasis on the other • Some may blend two (or more) identities with equal emphasis
White Racial 1. Contact: In the first stage of contact, the individual adheres Identity Model, to the “colorblind” motto. They see racial difference but do not Helms [49] find it salient and in fact may feel that racism is in fact propagated by the discussion and acknowledgement of race as an issue. In this stage, there is no conscious demonstration of racism here. This seemingly non-racist position can cover unconscious racist beliefs. If the individual is confronted with real-world experiences or knowledge that uncovers the privileges of White skin, they may move into the disintegration stage. 2. Disintegration: In this stage, because the person has new experiences which confront his prior conception of the world and because this conception is now challenged by this new information or experience, the person is often plagued by feelings of guilt and shame. These emotions of guilt and shame can be modified when the person decides to channel these emotions in a positive way but when those emotions continue to dominate, the person may move into the reintegration stage. 3. Reintegration: This stage is marked by a “blame-the-victim” attitude that’s more intense than anything experienced in the contact stage. They may feel that although Whites do have privileges, it is probably because they deserve them and in are in some way superior to minority groups. If the person is able to combat these feelings, they may be able to move on to the pseudo-independence stage. 4. Pseudo-Independence: This is the first stage of positive racial identification. Although an individual in this stage does not feel that Whites deserve privilege, they look to people of color, not themselves, to confront and uncover racism. They approve of these efforts and comfort the person as these efforts validate this person’s desire to be non-racist. Although this is positive White racial identity, the person does not have a sense of how they can be both White and non-racist together. 5. Immersion/Emersion: In this stage, the person makes a genuine attempt to connect to his/her own White identity and
40 to be anti-racist. This stage is usually accompanied by deep concern with understanding and connecting to other Whites who are or have been dealing with issues of racism. 6. Autonomy: The last stage is reached when an individual has a clear understanding of and positive connection to their White racial identity while also actively pursuing social justice. Helms’ stages are as much about finding a positive racial identification with being White and becoming an active anti-racist.
Racial and ethnic identity development is deeply interrelated to the process of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) within families and communities, which is the model proposed for racial and ethnic identity representation by this thesis. Definitions of RES and its most common themes emerging from empirical research are examined in the next section.
2.1.4 Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES)
In contrast to traditional approaches to racial and ethnic identity representation in videogames which may rely on inherently flawed classification systems, Passage Home VR implements a computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES). RES refers to the “mechanisms through which parents transmit information, values, and perspectives about ethnicity and race to their children” [3]. Scholars have demonstrated through studies of African American, Latinx, Asian, white, biracial, and cross-racially adopted youth that significant outcomes including self-esteem, academic motivation and achievement, coping strategies, and other behaviors are heavily influenced by racial identity development and socialization experiences [50].
41 This understanding of how RES impact behavior is applied in Passage Home VR, with the narrative content reflecting the various coping strategies employed by individuals when encountered with racial discrimination. Hughes et al. characterize the process of racial and ethnic identity development as “coming to an understanding of one’s position vis-à-vis their racial and ethnic group [through] the process of actively exploring one’s ethnicity and race and of determining their meaning in one’s life,” which is heavily influenced by what youth learn about their culture from family, their community, the media, and other sources (contributing to their RES) [3].
2.1.4.1 RES Themes and Coping Strategies
Early 1980s studies on African American families sought to characterize the processes by which parents instilled perspectives, attitudes, and values about racial group belonging, racial barriers, negative stereotypes, while promoting high self-esteem, instilling racial pride, and preparing children for bias [51, 52, 53, 54]. Similar to ingroup racial identity strength variation, there exists a diverse array of RES approaches and combinations of strategies, therefore resulting in diverse worldviews within groups regarding race- and ethnicity-related issues.
Hughes et al. [3] identified the key demographic and contextual factors commonly investigated as having a significant impact on the RES strategies employed by parents: children’s age and gender; parents’ socioeconomic status, immigration status, and
42 ethnic–racial identity; and, as contextual variables, region/neighborhood and parents’ past racial and ethnic discrimination experiences. Table 4 presents the four major RES themes which emerged from Hughes et al.’s extensive empirical research study [3] on prominent literature focused on racial and ethnic socialization from the fields of psychology, sociology, and related fields between 1975 and 2005.
Table 4: Emergent themes of racial and ethnic socialization practices in the U.S. [3, 55, 56, 57].
RES Theme Definition Strategy
Cultural Teaching children about their racial history, legacy, Proactive socialization and heritage, and to be proud of their culture.
Seeking to promote racial equality by avoiding any Colorblindness mention of race in discussions and ignoring issues of Adaptive racial privilege.
Explicitly encouraging children to value individual Egalitarianism qualities over racial group membership and ignoring Adaptive issues of structural inequity.
Alertness to Teaching children to be aware of the barriers of racism Proactive discrimination in society.
Preparation for Preparing children to be aware of and prepared for Proactive bias discrimination.
Promotion of Socializing children to be wary of people from other Reactive distrust races.
43
Figure 4: Coping strategies inventory (CSI) [58, 59, 60]. Individuals’ coping strategies for
dealing racial and ethnic identity-based discrimination are influenced by their RES.
Researchers have sought to understand the various coping strategies employed by individuals in order to defend psychological functioning and wellbeing in the face of stress.
The Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI) [58, 59, 60], shown in Figure 4, is an empirically- based three-level, hierarchical model of strategies used to cope with stressors. This model reflects combines coping categories observed by Lazarus and Folkman [58] and Suls and
Fletcher [59] (problem engagement, emotion engagement, problem disengagement, and emotion disengagement) with two tertiary factors (engagement and disengagement). The
CSI provides a model to understand parents’ and adolescents’ adaptive and maladaptive coping techniques for dealing with racial encounters and race-based traumatic stress
(RBTS) [61].
44 The prior sections have presented several theoretical perspectives from which to examine the concepts of race, ethnicity, racial and ethnic identity development, and racial and ethnic socialization (RES) and various coping strategies used for dealing with race-based traumatic stress (RBTS). This thesis proposes applying these social and cognitive science frameworks to modeling racial and ethnic identity in videogames. The next section examines existing strategies of computationally representing racial and ethnic identity within VR and videogame systems.
2.1.5 Virtual Representations of Race and Ethnicity
Classification infrastructure design plays a significant role in the implementation of identity representations in computing systems. Given the abstract and shifting concepts of race and ethnicity, the previous sections highlighted the need for designing infrastructures which reflect the non-uniformity of identification and socialization within racial and ethnic groups. The racial and ethnic identity model proposed in this thesis seeks to enable more meaningful relationships between videogame players and their virtual identity representations. To better understand the processes which characterize players’ relationships to these representations, this section defines avatars, presents several types of player-avatar relationships, and highlights issues resulting from socio-technical gap commonly found in VR and videogame systems.
45 2.1.5.1 Defining Avatars
Although the term has been loosely applied to many different kinds of identity representations in computing systems, an avatar can be defined as a virtual surrogate self that involves exercising choice and creating meaning within a digital environment. This emphasis on ego investment, agency, and meaning-making differentiates avatars from other representations within digital systems including agents, player characters, and non- player characters. Waggoner’s work, My Avatar, My Self [62], provides refined interpretations defining each of these terms: The appearance and skills of an agent cannot be altered in any way and do not change throughout the course of a game (e.g., Pac-
Man). A player-character is a representation of a game character or person whose actions are directly controlled by the player rather than the rules of the game (e.g., Link, Talim, or a famous athlete within a sports game). Finally, a non-player character (NPC) is any character within a game which is not controlled by the player [62].
2.1.5.2 Player-Avatar Relationships
There exist various approaches to characterizing the relationships between players’ stance towards and relationships with their avatars. Banks and Bowman [63] sought to distinguish player-avatar relationships as a function of attachment, agency, and intimacy through a model which takes into account four factors: (1) level of identification (“I am that avatar”), (2) suspension of disbelief (level acceptance of digital world as real one),
(3) sense of control (physical), (4) sense of care and responsibility (affective). This four-
46 dimensional analysis yielded four categories of relationships: (1) avatar as object, (2) avatar as me, (3) avatar as symbiote, and (4) avatar as other.
Harrell and Veeragoudar Harrell [64] studied the characteristics of adolescents’ avatar mediated identities within a classroom setting. They characterized the relationships between students and their avatars along three dimensions: (1) stance toward avatar appearance (everyday to extraordinary categories), (2) stance toward avatar ontological status (mirror of real self to a character external to self), and (3) stance toward avatar use
(instrumental to identity play).
Harrell’s work on social identity representation in digital media applications [65] synthesized the aligned characteristics between the sources and structures informing players’ various identities, drawing upon conceptual blending theory [66] to create a blended identity model, shown in Figure 5. This model reveals aligned characteristics across three domains of player identities: (1) physical identities, (2) virtual identities, and
(3) blended identities. Physical identities focus on players’ physically lived identity experiences of history, culture, and values. This domain highlights the ways in which people exist and behave within the physical world based on their cognitively grounded
[67] material, and social experiences. Virtual identities focus on the technical systems used as a medium for self-representation and are characterized by the data structures, algorithms, and computational aspects deployed for the user’s representation and control.
Finally, blended identities are based on the interrelationships between users’ physical and
47 virtual identities, and how the blends between these identities are “socially and culturally constructed, enacted, and manipulated” [2].
Figure 5: Blended-identity diagram. Cross-space mappings reveal aligned characteristics
between physical and virtual identities called “input spaces” in conceptual blending theory [2].
2.1.5.3 Box Effects
Harrell and Lim’s blended-identity model forefronts the technical system affordances and properties which enable players to express various characteristics of their identities.
However, aligning specific identity characteristics across domains is not always possible
48 due to limitations in the design and implementation of the technical system. For example, a user who does not identify as female or male may not be able to align their gender identity across the physical and virtual domains when creating a new account on a platform that has implemented a binary structure for storing this characteristic.
Although humans have a propensity towards regarding technical systems as objective and values-neutral, the reality is technical systems are implemented by human developers that embed their mental models and values into the design of the system. Thus, phenomena such as stereotypes, social biases, stigmas, discrimination, prejudice, racism, and sexism which exist in the physical world may persist into the virtual world. Harrell and Lim introduced the term box effects [2] to refer to peoples’ psychosocial experiences which result when classification systems fail due to the persistence of these phenomena across identity domains.
2.1.5.4 Race and Ethnicity Representation in Games
Designing robust computational representations of racial and ethnic identity within games, particularly intersectional identities based upon multiple traits, poses great challenges for researchers and developers and often results in box effects for players belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups. The lack of sufficient technical and cultural resources supporting the design and implementation of these racial and ethnic identity representations in videogames often leads to prototype effects, or “deviation or adherence to ideals [defining] perceived centrality to categories,” [65] a concept influenced by the
49 prototype theory of psychologist Eleanor Rosch. In spite of the nuanced and imaginative potentials for virtual identity representation, these systems may implement representations which rely on the following prototype-based groups [65]:
• Representatives (prototypes): ‘best example’ members of categories
• Stereotypes: normal, but often misleading, category expectations (e.g., gender
stereotypical categories define normative expectations for language use)
• Ideals: culturally valued categories even if not typically encountered (e.g., note
the difference between an ideal and stereotype – ideal husband: good provider,
faithful, strong, respected, attractive; Stereotypical husband: bumbling, dull, beer-
bellied)
• Paragons: defining categories in terms of individual members who represent either
an ideal or its opposite (e.g., ‘he is no Turing when it comes to computing’, ‘it’s
the Taj Mahal of apartments!’)
• Salient examples: memorable examples used to understand/create categories
(e.g., after experiencing an earthquake in California someone may never wish to
travel there, even from a place with a higher incidence of natural disaster).
This section highlighted the challenges and current limitations of approaches to racial and ethnic identity representation within videogames, which motivate the design and implementation of the novel RES model embedded in Passage Home VR. The box effects resulting from the limitations of prototype-based approaches impede designers’ ability to
50 tell transformational stories and empower players to fully express their imaginative potentials in interactive games. The next section reviews foundations for the design and implementation of virtual identity representations in immersive videogames focused on social issues.
2.2 Virtual Reality, Gaming, and Social Issues
Passage Home VR is an interactive VR narrative which addresses the issue of racial discrimination in educational settings. VR technology was specifically chosen for the implementation of this interactive narrative for its immersive qualities. Given the sensory affordances of VR, it is a compelling medium for creating experiences which may lead to meaningful social and psychological impacts and changes to future behavior. This section provides a brief overview of design approaches which leverage the unique qualities of VR as a medium, the field of impact and serious games, and examples of existing works which use immersive media technology to address social issues.
2.2.1 Virtual Reality Design
Designing systems for VR is distinct from designing systems for screen-based and other media given the unique properties and affordances of the medium. Olson et al. [68] describe the sensory affordances of VR as visual, auditory, tangible, and gestural, and the technology of VR as typically including: (1) real-time computer graphics, (2) dynamic
51 visual interaction including: a panoramic image space with positional and orientation tracking, (3) sensory elements including: stereoscopic vision, a head-mounted viewing device, and spatial audio, and often (4) motor elements including peripheral devices such as handheld controllers. In contrast to existing media forms, VR technologies enable developers to integrate modes of embodied interaction that humans have in the physical- world (e.g., head motion, touch, gait, gesture) and augment them with novel “synthetic” virtual experiences. VR provides a medium in which humans can step into new perspectives with a greater sense of immersion and presence, and experience high-stakes encounters (including those that are discriminatory in nature) from that perspective in a safe and repeatable manner.
2.2.1.1 Embodied Identity Representation
This thesis introduces the term embodied identity representation to refer to the design of how users’ physical, virtual, and blended identities are represented in immersive VR (IVR) spaces. VR experiences may give users the option of having no body, an object instead of a body, a partial body, their own body, another person’s body, or even multiple bodies
[68]. The unique affordances of IVR present novel capabilities as well as design challenges for virtual identity representation. Slater et al. [10] have demonstrated the potential for
IVR to induce radical body transfer illusions which demonstrated that “ownership can be transferred to an entirely virtual body (VB), using an experimental design that separates perspective position from visuotactile stimulation,” raising incredible possibilities for the
52 design of transformational experiences. Although recent investigations have found VR perspective-tasking tasks to be effective at improving attitudes and prosocial behavior toward specific social targets up to two months following the experience [69], there is still much debate over whether IVR applications which seek to transform players have truly resulted in long-term behavioral and perspective changes. In the words of Jeremy
Bailenson, “no medium, of course, can fully capture the subjective experience of another person, but by richly evoking a real seeming, first-person perspective, virtual reality does seem to promise to offer new, empathy-enhancing qualities” [9].
Researchers have sought to better understand the effects of body transfer in players’ who employ an embodied identity representation of social groups to which they do not belong, producing contradictory experimental results. Two examples of research efforts exploring the effects of perceptual illusions of body ownership over different-race virtual bodies
(VBs) in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) include Banakou et al.’s study [70] on the body transfer of white participants into a black VB which resulted in reduced implicit bias as measured by the Implicit Association Task (IAT) and Groom et al.’s study [71] which found that people embodying black VBs in IVEs demonstrated greater implicit bias as measured by the IAT outside the IVE when compared to people who had embodied the white VBs.
Other explorations of leveraging IVEs to promote cross-group empathy in users include
Sun Joo Ahn et al.’s “self-other merging” study on colorblindness [72] which resulted in non-colorblind participants spending twice as much time helping persons with
53 colorblindness after experiencing a VR sorting task in which they could not differentiate between red and green. Oh et al.’s study on ageism showed that a perspective-taking experience in VR was not sufficient in overcoming empathetic avoidance amongst young participants towards the elderly [73]. Given these ambivalent findings, healthy skepticism of the meaningful impact and long-term effectiveness of VR empathy applications persists.
The Empathy at Scale project [74] is one of many current efforts which seeks to identify the boundary and ceiling conditions of VR empathy and better understand the generalization of empathy induced via VR experiences into everyday life.
2.2.2 Serious and Impact Games
Videogames have outstripped the film and music industries in terms of revenue worldwide
[75], with players belonging to diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and other groups. Given the rapid growth of this industry and growing adoption of this medium, games are being more broadly applied beyond entertainment, to domains such as educational and workplace settings. Creating games on serious topics is becoming more and more commonplace and the production of serious games and impact games requires an interdisciplinary approach to transformational game design.
The use of interactive gameplay primarily for educational purposes, beyond or in addition to entertainment purposes, are referred to as serious games [76, 77]. Another term referring to games whose purposes are beyond or in addition to entertainment is impact
54 games, which has been used to describe games which focus on investigating, innovating, and cultivating solutions to societal challenges using gaming, such as Passage Home VR.
Impact games provide players with an opportunity for culturally-situated reflection through virtual experiences which model complex social and political forces, which is further explored in the next section.
2.2.3 Interactive Media Addressing Social Issues
Games and other interactive media are forms of cultural production, personal expression, and social capital which have been used to both reinforce and reimagine various social realities, and are therefore a compelling tool for addressing social issues.
VR, in particular, has been referred to as an “empathy machine” [78] due to its unique perceptual experiences which offer feelings of presence and immersed first-person perspectives. However, through her analytical framework of staged empathy, Sutherland
[79] suggests “the insufficiency of empathy as a means to gain complete access to the mind of another” as it relies upon then imitation and “performance in one’s own mind of the real experience occurring in someone else's mind.” She defines two design techniques to analyze how VR works engage with and enable users to perform the concept of empathy:
(1) intentional looking and (2) direct address. Intentional looking describes techniques that take into account different characteristics of looking, ranging from glancing to gazing to staring, in the VR environment. Direct address refers to the reflexive process of a user
55 “both seeing and being seen by” the VR system, which produces visuals in response to the position of the viewer's head at the environmental level and the character level.
A few recent examples of empathetic art produced using VR include Clouds over Sidra, a
360 immersive film featuring the daily experiences of a young girl Sidra who lives inside of the Za’atari refugee camp in Northern Jordan [80], Becoming Homeless, a VR film which puts users into the first-person experience of a person who is transitioning from having a job and residence to homelessness [81], Hunger in Los Angeles, an immersive journalism piece reconstructing the events of a man who goes into diabetic shock at a Los
Angeles food bank [82], and The Enemy, a journalistic VR artwork by photojournalist
Karim Ben Khelifa addressing the experiences of fighters on both sides of global conflicts in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and El Salvador [83, 84].
Sutherland draws attention to how VR works such as Hunger in Los Angeles disregard subjective experiences including “bodily risk, apperception (the use of past knowledge or experience to influence current perception), and an array of sensory and mental information that colors perception” by focusing on objective realism [79]. She contrasts this approach with rendering of the characters and environment in the virtual world realistically, such as the physical approach and retreat behavior by characters in The
Enemy. The system response to user approach “mirrors the response that might be triggered in everyday interaction, if the user was to violate the sphere of socially acceptable personal space around another person's body” [79].
56 Applications of VR for addressing social issues and empathy-building remains a bourgeoning research field. However, to achieve empathy as an affective goal, it is important to consider how the sensory affordances of VR might account for the subjective perceptions and experiences of bodies in space. These design choices heavily influence users’ performative interaction with the technical system. Given that gesture is one of the most salient sensory affordances of VR, the next section introduces the field of gestural
HCI and its applications to interactive narrative games.
2.3 Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Concepts of race and ethnicity are indelibly intertwined with social meanings of bodies.
With this reality in mind, Passage Home VR employs body language as a game mechanics to drive forward the narrative experience. Nonverbal communication such as body language, gesture, facial expression, and tone of voice play a huge role in physical-world interactions. Interpretations and social meanings of nonverbal communication are also shaped by race, ethnicity, and cultural context.
Human-computer interaction (HCI) approaches relying on these forms of communication are becoming increasingly popular and ubiquitous, further blurring lines between the digital and physical world. Gestural interaction paradigms are especially compelling for designers and developers seeking to create intuitive, artistic forms of interactive media which put users in scenarios which imitate real-world encounters and experiences. The
57 final sections of this chapter reviews a literature review-based classification schema for understanding gestural HCI, and applications of gestural HCI in interactive narrative systems such as Passage Home VR.
2.3.1 Gestural Interface Design
Through a thorough literature review surveying over 40 years of research on gesture-based
HCI, Karam and Schraefel [85] produced a taxonomy, shown in Figure 6, categorizing gesture-based interactions in terms of four key elements: (1) the application domains they are applied to, (2) enabling technologies (for input), (3) system response technologies (for output), and (4) gesture styles used for implementation. To establish a foundation for understanding the body language interaction approach used in Passage Home VR, this section briefly presents relevant research from their literature review across each of these four elements.
58
Figure 6: Gesture based HCI taxonomy [85].
2.3.1.1 Gestural HCI Application Domains
This section will review gesture based research specifically applied to games and virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), which are two of the largest application domains of gestural HCI, and the application domain featured in this research. In games, gestural interaction is commonly used for the purposes of controlling and manipulating game objects [86], spatial tracking and navigation [87], game input [88], and movement in the
59 game environment [89]. Gestural HCI in VR and AR can be organized into four main categories: (1) immersive interactions and avatars, (2) manipulation and navigation in virtual worlds, (3) object manipulation in semi-immersed virtual worlds, (4) fully-immersed robotics and telepresence. Techniques illustrating each of the four categories of gestural
HCI in VR and AR as explained by Karam and Schraefel [85] are listed in Table 5.
Table 5: Techniques for gestural HCI in VR and AR [85].
Category Example Techniques Immersive • Superimposing the user’s image on top of a display using video Interactions projection to enable virtual interaction with objects [90] and Avatars • Mapping pen gestures and strokes drawn on a tablet input device to control different facial and body expressions of an avatar [91] • Fitted, full-body body sensor tracking for direct modeling and control of a virtual human’s body form and movement movements [92, 93, 94]
Manipulation • Embedding sensors in the floor and in users’ shoes to map and Navigation physical-world movement into the virtual world, enabling in Virtual navigation and manipulation in the virtual environment [95] Worlds • Tracking natural hand motion and gesture using sensor augmented gloves to which is visually reproduced and enables manipulation of graphical objects in the digital world [96] • Whole-hand direct manipulation (e.g., reaching into a simulation to manipulate an object), abstracted graphical input (e.g., pushing a button in a simulation), and “stream of token” movements (e.g., sign language) to enable interaction in virtual worlds [97]
Object • Shaking physical-world objects (e.g: paper images, blocks, etc.) Manipulation to trigger interactions with the display [98] in Semi- • Using bare hands to move and select objects in the display [99] Immersed Virtual Worlds
60 Fully-Immersed • Viewing a robot’s environment through a head-mounted display Robotics and (HMD) and mapping human gesture to control the direction, Telepresence speed, and arm/hand motion of the robot [100]
2.3.1.2 Enabling Technologies
Enabling (input) technologies can be broadly categorized into two groups: (1) non- perceptual input technologies and (2) perceptual input technologies. Devices and objects which require physical contact to transmit location, spatial, or temporal information to the computer processor to register input gesture are referred to as non-perceptual input technologies, while perceptual input technologies recognize gesture without any physical contact or use of wearables or intermediate devices. Examples and applications of non- perceptual and perceptual input technologies as explained by Karam and Schraefel [85] are listed in Table 6.
Table 6: Non-perceptual and perceptual input technologies for gestural HCI [85].
Input Technology Examples Non- Mouse and Pen • Provides alternative to point-and-click Perceptual method of HCI Input • Simple and fast method to issue direct commands with gestures or strokes of mouse or pen • One of the oldest and commonly used form of gesture
61 Touch and • Provides more natural interaction style Pressure • Does not require external device (e.g., mouse or pen) • Widely used in mobile computing; more recently applied to desktop monitors and small mobile screens • Contact gesture styles imitate what can be performed on a surface
Electronic Sensing: • One of the first methods for arm and hand Wearable or Body motion detection in gestural HCI Mounted • Tracks space, position, orientation • More recently applied to adaptive technologies • Low scalability due to cost and unnatural for everyday use (sensors must remain attached to the user)
Electronic Sensing: • Enable more detailed and accurate gesture Gloves recognition (e.g., individual finger, wrist, and hand movement) • Track finger bending, position, and orientation • May provide haptic feedback • Widely applied to enable interaction in VR, finger-spelling, manipulation of graphical objects, visual programming languages, hand impairment evaluation, autonomous agent control interfaces, telematics robotics, and 3D navigation Electronic Sensing: • Referred to as tangible or graspable Sensor-Embedded interfaces Objects and • Involve object movement and Tangible manipulation which are translated to Interfaces deictic, manipulative, and semaphoric gestures for HCI Electronic Sensing: • Enabled using infrared tracking devices, Tracking Devices receivers, trackers, and/or cameras to detect input • Applied to device identification, data transfer, remote control
62 Audio Input • Enabled using audio sensors • Detects sound associated with specific gestures (e.g., knocks, taps, registered audio resulting from finger and hand motion) and location of sound origin • Limited in gestural HCI, but provides alternative to pointing and selection gestures • May require attaching audio sensors to the user Perceptual Computer Vision • Early methods included using video Input sensors to recognize hand movements • Vision-based recognition is challenged by changes to lighting conditions and object position (motion) • LEDs may be combined with cameras to improve robustness, but restricts types of gestures which can be enabled
Remote Sensors • Enables full-body movement and remote sensing for gestural HCI using electric field transmission • Detects human presence, movement, and pressure • Has been used as alternative to mouse HCI with finger movement tracking using on-screen sensors
2.3.1.3 System Response Technologies
System responses (outputs) which are the results of gestural interactions can be broadly categorized into three groups: (1) audio responses, (2) visual responses (2D and 3D), and
(3) CPU or command-directed responses. Descriptions of each of these three output types as a result of gestural interaction as explained by Karam and Schraefel [85] are listed in
Table 7.
63 Table 7: System responses to gestural interactions [85].
Output Type Description Audio • Primarily based in mobile and pervasive style computing • Frees up primary attention for other critical processes requiring attention • Can be used to communicate graphical and spatial information
Visual 2-Dimensional: • Included desktop or large screens, projected displays, or mobile devices • Not normally based on the intended gesture interaction design
3-Dimensional: • Includes HMDs and stereoscopic displays • Can be enabled by both 2D and 3D style gestures • Outputs may be: § fully-immersive (3D projected displays or graphics), § semi-immersive (enhanced screen output of 3D images using stereoscopic glasses), or § non-immersive (presented on a 2D display)
CPU or • Often used as a control input to devices and applications, Command rather than an output (e.g., pointing gesture to activate device Directed in smart room) • Different gestures may be mapped to different output behaviors, for communication interfaces, or as control interfaces for smart rooms or ubiquitous computing environments
2.3.1.4 Gesture Styles
The various styles of gesture which have been broadly enabled in the field of gestural HCI can be categorized into five groups: (1) deictic gestures, (2) manipulation, (3) semaphores,
(4) gesticulation, and (5) language gestures. These gesture styles as explained by Karam and Schraefel [85] are defined in Table 8.
64 Table 8: HCI Gesture styles [85].
Gesture Style Description Deictic Pointing gestures which establish an object’s identity or spatial location. Manipulative Applies a tight relationship between the actual movements of the gesturing hand/arm with the object being manipulated to indicate intent of the user’s request to move, relocate, or physically alter the object; can occur within multiple degrees of freedom.
Semaphores Uses a dictionary of specific styles of static or dynamic hand or arm gestures or mouse/stylus strokes which are typically not natural. Gesticulation Coverbal, natural gestures which occur in the context of user speech to clarify descriptions, are not based on pre-recorded gesture mapping, and can be idiosyncratic; one of the most challenging areas of gestural HCI research. Sign Language Linguistically-based gestures performed using a series of individual signs combined to form grammatical structures for conversational interfaces; based on linguistic components as opposed to finger- spelling, which can be considered semaphoric.
This section presented a classification of gesture-based HCI across four broad topics: application domains, enabling technologies, system response, and gesture styles. Since body language is used as the interaction mechanism to drive the narrative experience in
Passage Home VR, the next section builds on this foundation and presents concepts related to the use of gestural HCI in interactive narrative systems.
2.3.2 Gestural HCI in Interactive Narrative
Interactive narrative games, such as Passage Home VR, enable players to influence and alter the direction and outcome of a narrative storyline, which may include emotional
65 tone, theme, perspective, and other content elements in response to their input, choices, and behavior within the virtual environment. The concept of indexical storytelling has been derived from Peirce’s philosophy of language [101] to describe “a strategy to construct the narrative of the game, based on leaving traces and affecting the space, either on the part of the designer or the player” [102]. In gesture-driven interactive narratives, the user may perform gestures which in turn causes storyworld characters to perform gestures, thereby resulting in an indexical relationship.
Harrell et al. [103] assert that a critical design goal of these narratives “is to implement a set of indexical relationships suited for effective interactive narrative.” They identified the two main gestural interaction types likely to be used in gesture-driven interactive narrative: (1) input gestures, which refer to the gestures used to interact with the enabling technology (e.g., clicking and dragging on a touchscreen) and (2) storyworld gestures, which serve as narrative acts or expressions within the interactive narrative experience
(e.g., a game character pointing at another character. They identified the most effective indexical relationships between input and storyworld gestures as (1) pantomimic, (2) iconic, (3) metonymic or metaphoric, (4) manipulative, and (5) semaphoric, which are described in Table 9.
Table 9: Effective indexical relationships for gesture-driven interactive narratives [103].
Gesture Type Indexical Relationship Example
66 User action is echoed as an Swinging a device to swings a Pantomimic avatar action storyworld tennis racket
User action depicts the form A “<>” motion with fingers makes Iconic of an avatar action a character place its hands on hips
Metonymic – shaking the device makes a character User action is associated with Metonymic or angry; Metaphoric —downward the same meaning as an Metaphoric swiping makes a character appear avatar action emotionally down (SAD is DOWN)
User action tightly Manipulative Dragging flips a light switch on/off manipulates an object
User action controls Semaphoric something outside of the Double-clicking pauses (non-diegetic) storyworld
This chapter has been meant to establish a basic understanding of race and ethnicity and the role they play in shaping individuals’ unique experiences within our larger society, and present theoretical models across the fields of sociology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction as they relate to the design of gesture-driven interactive narratives. This framework provides a critical interdisciplinary lens for the design, implementation, and evaluation of a body language driven, interactive VR narrative focused on issues of racial discrimination in society. This interactive VR narrative, entitled Passage Home VR, is described in the next chapter.
67 Chapter 3
Passage Home VR Design and Implementation
This section presents an overview of the design and implementation of Passage Home VR, an interactive VR narrative which seeks to understand the efficacy of a computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) for interactive storytelling. An initial software prototype of Passage Home VR was used to facilitate an exploratory case study on how a computational model of RES impacted players’ subjective interpretations of a storyline focused on racial discrimination in an educational setting.
3.1 Design Approach for Passage Home VR
This interactive VR narrative was developed with the goal of better understanding how players’ racial and ethnic socialization (RES) influences how they experience emotions, perceive characters, themes, and events in VR narratives, the efficacy of an embedded computational model of RES, and the use of body language as a game mechanic for a narrative focused on social identity phenomena. The narrative, which features racial discrimination in an educational setting, also serves to shed light on the issue of discrimination in schools and classrooms, an experience which unduly affects youth of color in the U.S. educational system. Finally, this work seeks to investigate the feasibility of using Passage Home VR to potentially to support social scientific research, namely
68 Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace). EMBRace is a culturally relevant selective intervention developed by clinicians and researchers for black families utilizing racial socialization to address stress and trauma from racial encounters [125].
This section provides more information about the EMBRace intervention as well as the collaborative process which was used to design the narrative, audio and visual elements, and interactions within the experience.
3.1.1 About EMBRace
African American individuals who are confronted with discriminatory racial encounters experience a range of negative effects on their wellbeing, from lowered self-esteem [50], internalizing [104] and externalizing [105] problems, to measurable health impacts such as increased cardiovascular disease [106, 107]. Seaton [108] identified differences in levels of depressive symptoms in African American adolescents across racial identity profiles.
Given the significant impact of racial socialization on racial identity formation and its resulting impact on various indicators of wellbeing, it is critical that researchers better understand the processes of parent-adolescent racial and ethnic socialization (RES) transmission and its relationship to racial stress and trauma. EMBRace is a novel racial socialization intervention developed by a multidisciplinary team of individuals with backgrounds in counseling, clinical psychology, education, and human development for black adolescents and their parents.
69 The intervention uses evidence-based practices to address four goals: (1) reduce racial stress and trauma, (2) improve parent-adolescent communication and racial socialization transmission, (3) strengthen individual and family stress management and racial coping assertiveness, and (4) improve academic, psychological, and physiological wellbeing in families. RES has traditionally been used by black families to prepare and protect children from past, current, and future racial stress and trauma, and to insulate families from the negative impacts of racial encounters on family wellbeing.
The EMBRace program recruits youth ages 10-14 with at least one parent identified as
African-American. This curriculum-based intervention is facilitated by trained clinicians begins and ends with a 2-hour assessment measuring racial stress, coping ability, and other well-being, and delivery of the curriculum is scheduled across five 2-hour sessions.
Table 10 presents the schedule of the program, including the content, process, and delivery method used during each session. EMBRace focuses on skill-building in three major areas:
(1) RES content (e.g., cultural socialization, preparation for bias, promotion of distrust, and egalitarianism), (2) racial coping (e.g., knowledge, stress management, and resolution), and (3) delivery (e.g., affection, protection, correction, and connection).
Table 10: EMBRace program schedule. Each of the five 90-minute intervention sessions
contained three components: 30-minute individual sessions with caregivers and youth working
separately with clinicians, a 15-minute break and dinner with the child and all present family
members, and a 45-minute family session.
70 Week of RES Content Process Delivery Pre-Test (120 min) Session 1 Cultural Pride RE Knowledge Affection (90 min) Session 2 Preparation for RE Knowledge Protection (90 min) Bias Session 3 Promotion of RE Stress Correction (90 min) Distrust Management Session 4 RE Stress Colorblindness, etc. Connection (90 min) Management Session 5 Applied Skills RE Coping Applied Skills (90 min) Post-Test (120 min)
Facilitators are trained to identify and adapt the intervention to the strengths and feedback of participants in order to promote personal and familial growth in psychological, physiological, and identity-related outcomes. Facilitation across the five sessions incorporates therapeutic practices including relaxation, debating, media, and art, as well as roleplaying to understand the techniques employed by families to prepare youth for racially biased environments.
Past EMBRace roleplaying activities have used paper prompts to guide face-to-face dyadic roleplaying between parents and adolescents. Interest in utilizing immersive media experiences to support roleplaying practices used in the intervention led to the design and development of the Passage Home VR experience. Although RES provides a framework for understanding how adolescents think about race, little is known about how these
71 socialization strategies are strategically employed during racially charged experiences.
Passage Home VR provides a novel tool for better understanding the behavioral choices adolescents make when encountered with racial injustice following their completion of the
EMBRace intervention.
This research collaboration was directed by EMBRace Co-Principal Investigator, Riana
Elyse Anderson, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Health Behavior & Health Education,
University of Michigan), the author, and Director of the MIT Center for Advanced
Virtuality and Principal Investigator of the MIT Imagination, Computation, and
Expression Laboratory, D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D. (Professor of Artificial Intelligence and
Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). To the faculty collaborators’ and the author’s best knowledge, as well as the results yielded thorough review of the relevant literature, this is the first time a narrative VR experience has been developed to comprehend how adolescents translate RES competencies into behavior and actions during discriminatory racial encounters.
3.1.2 Narrative and System Design Process
The design process for Passage Home VR was initiated during the Spring 2017 and 2018 semesters of the MIT Advanced Identity Representation course (CMS.628/828), instructed by Professor D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D. with a small team of student collaborators managed by the author. The course was developed as a part of Harrell’s NSF-Supported
72 project: CAREER: Computing for Advanced Identity Representation. It presents various approached to understanding social identity in digital media based in computing, social science, cognitive science, and digital media art by facilitating the following skills: (1) analysis of social and cultural identity across digital media (2) interdisciplinary research and analysis of disciplinary values, and (3) research and development of virtual identity systems (methods and design). During both semesters, teams of three to four undergraduate and graduate students encompassing multidisciplinary backgrounds (e.g., computer science, design, brain and cognitive science, comparative media, women and gender studies, sociology) and diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities were assembled and managed by the author.
This research effort employed award-winning game designer and educator Tracy
Fullerton’s playcentric design approach [109], shown in Table 11, for developing ideas from initial concepts to playable and satisfying game experiences.
It is important to note that the scope of this thesis focuses steps 1 through 5 of the playcentric design approach: (1) brainstorming, (2) physical prototyping, (3) presentation,
(4) software prototyping, and (5) design documentation. Step 4 involved playtesting within an experimental user study performed using the software prototype (detailed in Chapter
4), and the results and findings presented in this thesis serve as the foundation for the design documentation in step 5. Future work will involve refinement of the design documentation for step 6 (which is the production of a more robust software implementation of the system). Finally, step 7 (quality assurance) will involve deploying
73 Passage Home VR within the EMBRace intervention to both quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate its efficacy as a therapeutic roleplaying tool with participants.
Table 11: Steps for a playcentric design process [109].
Index Step Description 1 Brainstorming • Set player experience goals. • Come up with game concepts or mechanics that you think might achieve your player experience goals. 2 Physical • Create a playable prototype using pen and paper or Prototype other craft materials. • Playtest the physical prototype • When the physical prototype demonstrates working gameplay that achieves your player experience goals, write a three- to six-page gameplay treatment describing how the game functions. 3 Presentation • A presentation is often made to secure funds to hire the (Optional) prototyping team. Even if you do not require funding, going through the exercise of creating a full presentation is a good way to think through your game and introduce it to the team members and upper management for feedback. • Your presentation should include demo artwork and a solid gameplay treatment. • If this step does not elicit positive feedback, you can either return to Step 1 and start over again on a new concept. 4 Software • When you have your prototyping team in place, you Prototype(s) can begin creating rough computer models of the core gameplay. Often there are several software prototypes made, each focusing on different aspects of the system. (If possible, try to do this entirely with temporary graphics that cost very little to make. This will save time and money and make the process go faster.) • Playtest the software prototype(s). • When the software prototype(s) demonstrate working gameplay that achieves your player experience goals, move on to the documentation step.
74 5 Design • While you have been prototyping and working on your Documentation gameplay, you have probably been compiling notes and ideas for the “real” game. Use the knowledge you’ve gained during this prototyping stage to write the first draft of a document that outlines every aspect of the game and how it functions. • This document is usually called the design document, but recently, many designers have moved away from static documents toward online design wikis because of their flexible, collaborative nature. A design wiki is a great collaboration tool and living document that changes and grows with the production. 6 Production • Work with all of the team members to make sure each aspect of the design is achievable and correctly described in the design document. • When an initial draft of the design document is completed, move on to production. • Production is the time to staff up and begin the creation of the real artwork and programming. • Don’t lose sight of the playcentric process during production—test your artwork, gameplay, characters, etc., as you move along. As you continue to perform iterative cycles throughout the production phase, the problems you find and the changes you make should get smaller and smaller. This is because you solved your major issues during the prototyping phases. • Unfortunately, this is the time when most game designers actually wind up designing their games, and this can lead to numerous problems of time, money, and frustration. 7 Quality By the time the project is ready for quality assurance Assurance testing, you should be very sure that your gameplay is solid. There can still be some issues, so continue playtesting with an eye to usability. Now is the time to make sure your game is accessible to your entire target audience.
3.1.2.1 Brainstorming
During the brainstorming step, the team was first oriented to the background and goals of the EMBRace program, developed a scope and target deliverables for the semester (e.g.,
75 background research information, character design, narrative scripts, audio and visual asset collection, prototype scene implementation, etc.), then worked with the author and
Professors Harrell and Anderson, as well as fellow students in the course, to continuously receive critique and feedback to ensure project progress was aligned with the intent and goals of the intervention.
Given the eventual intent of using Passage Home VR for therapeutic roleplaying with
EMBRace intervention participants, the narrative design process was initiated with the broad goal of authoring a first-person roleplaying experience of a discriminatory racial encounter with an authority figure. In order to narrow the scope of the story’s specific subject matter, the initial team of student researchers were tasked with performing extensive research on personal and institutional discrimination across various domains
(e.g., racial inequality in public schools, by police and law enforcement, in health care, etc.). Table 12 presents a select few examples of the stories collected by student researchers across various media forms (including blogs, videos, articles, and audio recordings) detailing personal experiences of racial discrimination on young African American and
Latinx people. Upon collection and sharing of these story resources, students were tasked with individually generating ideas for a narrative experience grounded in these real-world examples.
76 Table 12: Story resources which contributed to narrative design. Design team students were tasked with researching media featuring real-world narratives of discriminatory racial encounters
during the brainstorming process.
Title and Author Media Format Description Academia, Love Blog Post The first-person narrative of a high- Me Back achieving, young Latinx woman who by Tiffany experienced discrimination in higher Martinez [110] education when her college professor assumed she was not capable of the quality of writing in a paper she submitted for an assignment. The teacher wrote “this is not your language” in reference to the student’s use of the word “Hence” and “Please go back and indicate where you cut and paste” on her graded paper. The Scars of Video Op-Doc This op-doc focuses on the experiences of Stop-and-Frisk people in New York City who have been by Julie Dressner confronted with New York City Police’s and Edwin controversial use of “stop and frisk” (which is Martinez [111] illegal without reasonable suspicion of a weapon), and disproportionately affects young men of color. The video tells the story of Tyquan, a young African-American male who shares his experiences being stopped and frisked by law enforcement up to three or four times per month, being placed in handcuffs and taken to jail after being accused of crimes he did not commit, then let go once they confirmed he was innocent. It also shares the reflections of teachers and mentors in his community affected both indirectly and directly by discriminatory policing.
77 Teen accused of News Article This article tells the story of Ryan, a black stealing 65-cent teenager at a Virginia middle school who is carton of milk at eligible for and receives free lunch from his middle school to school county. After getting his lunch from stand trial the cafeteria lunch line, he realized he forgot by Victoria St. his drink, and headed back to get it. A school Martin resource officer who saw Ryan return to the [112] line and take the milk confronted him, and said the middle schooler “leaned back and pushed against” him. Ryan was arrested, accused of stealing the carton of 65-cent milk, and put in handcuffs. He has been charged with disorderly conduct and petit larceny, and went to trial in November 2016. Charges were eventually dropped in January 2017. Undocumented News Podcast This podcast investigates the experiences of Teens Say undocumented high school teenagers and They’re Falsely unaccompanied minors in New York (who Accused of Being cannot be deported unless they are believed in a Gang to be a threat or danger) who have been by Sarah falsely accused of membership to the MS-13 Gonzalez [113] gang, arrested, and illegally detained and booked. One student and her mother shared her story of being accused of belonging to MS-13, arrested, held for weeks within the immigration wing of a county jail, and finally released due to inadequate evidence for the judge.
Researchers were also asked to read and discuss a set of seminal peer-approved research articles on racial and ethnic socialization and racial identity to establish a common understanding of RES theory prior to holding collaborative brainstorming sessions across several weeks. These brainstorming sessions, guided by shared knowledge of RES theory and infused by inspiration from student ideas and shared story resources, were used to decide upon core aspects of the creative vision for the story, which are presented in Table
78 13. The next section reviews the system design approach to developing this creative vision into a functional prototype.
Table 13: Core design decisions for creative vision of narrative storyline.
Design Decision Creative Vision Context of Urban Charter High School for the Humanities discriminatory • Brooklyn, NY racial encounter • Prestigious, predominantly white charter school for the arts and humanities • 9th Grade Honors English Classroom • False accusation of plagiarism on midterm essay Videogame Passage Home VR Name The name “Passage Home” comes from three sources of inspiration: • The Middle Passage: the historical period in which millions of Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. • The Passage of Getting Home Safely: a daily human journey during which countless unarmed people of color in America have been needlessly injured or killed by police. • Racial Passage: the process by which people of color seek to evade racial discrimination by presenting themselves as white in order to reap the benefits of white privilege.
First-person Tiffany player character • 15-year-old African American girl named Tiffany (inspired by Tiffany Martinez, a Latinx university student who wrote an essay about being accused of plagiarism [110]) • Commutes from a less affluent neighborhood to her school • One of few black students and students from her neighborhood at her school • Only student in her Honors English class • High-achieving student with English as her favorite subject • Decided to enroll in her school to support her dreams of going to college to become a writer in the future
79 Non-player Mrs. Serilda character (NPC) • Late-twenties white female teacher named Mrs. Serilda authority figure • Teaches 9th Grade Honors English (Tiffany is in her class) • Graduated within the last 5 years from a predominantly white, private liberal arts college • Wanted to become a teacher to share her love of writing • Serves a majority-white student body • Holds unconscious biases towards students of color and their writing abilities Player identity Identity categories grounded in RES theory: categories for • Colorblind: The “colorblind” category reflects the narrative mainstream philosophy in the U.S. of idealistic customization egalitarianism and individualistic achievement of the American dream through hard work, without acknowledgement of institutional barriers which may exist for racial and ethnic minorities. This category emphasizes mainstream fit and a lack of alertness to racial discrimination. Because of its prevalence in the American psyche, the player-character is initialized in this category by default. • Cultural Pride Coper: The “cultural pride coper” category reflects the effects of socialization which is alert to overt and covert racial discrimination and reflects a response approach that affirms the cultural pride and legacy of one’s group to insulate oneself from the effects of racial discrimination. • Distrusting Coper: The “distrusting coper” category is similar to the “Cultural coper” category in that both groups are alert to various forms of racial discrimination. However, this category reflects a response approach that emphasizes alienation from the mainstream, ingroup loyalty, and discourages cross-racial and ethnic group engagement to insulate oneself from the effects of racial discrimination. Possible Responses based on engagement level: response styles • Disengaged responses for the first- • Moderately engaged responses person player • Highly engaged responses character Responses based on ranges in RES category levels: • Ambivalent responses • Assertive responses • Distrusting responses
80 Possible Responses reflective of player’s current engagement level and/or response styles ranges in RES category gradients and identity category: by the NPC • Condescending responses authority figure • Insistent responses • Questioning responses • Compromising responses Possible final 1. Teacher realizes student did not cheat, lets her go outcomes of the 2. Teacher acknowledges the possibility that she may have encounter made a mistake, asks to discuss essay in more detail next week 3. Teacher insists student did cheat, asks her to rewrite essay by next week 4. Teacher insists student did cheat, asks her to rewrite essay by next week and calls for principal intervention Design of player • Simple, colorful 3D polygon-based graphics (for rapid interactions, initial implementation and focused feedback on story audio, visual, engine) and narrative • Instrumental music with hip-hop beat and “mysterious” content style chord progression • Interaction through looking (gaze-based) and clicking (for selection) on various options of body language • Predefined set of player-character body language as options at each decision point for responding to teacher • Simple sounds for feedback upon selection (e.g., page turns for advancing narrative, bell sounds for movement and changes to scene) • Instructions presented using simple flat interface overlays to ease usability and learnability of system • Narrative written in simple language for future use with young students across a variety of literacy skills • Racially charged content in narrative content employs “coded language,” which appears to have a benign meaning to members of the general population but has a negative, specific resonance to a targeted subgroup.
3.1.2.2 Physical Prototype and Presentation
A storyboard slideshow, a set of rules and verbal instructions, and paper handouts constituted the playable physical prototype. Examples of these assets are shown in Table
81 14. A short presentation reviewing the scope, goals, and design approach of Passage Home
VR accompanied the physical prototype to ensure participants were adequately informed and prepared to provide valuable feedback.
The playtest group included Professor Harrell, CMS.628/828 students, and three notable guest speakers whose work addresses issues of racial discrimination in history, society, and computational systems: Timnit Gebru, Ph.D., an Ethiopian-American computer scientist and the technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google and cofounder of Black in AI, Joy Buolamwini, a Ghanian-American computer scientist, digital activist at the MIT Media Lab, and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, Cecil
Brown, Ph.D., an African-American writer and educator, and Wasalu Muhammad Jaco
(known as Lupe Fiasco), an African-American rap artist, producer, and entrepreneur.
Table 14: Sample assets used for early playtest of Passage Home VR.
Playtest Asset Description Paper handouts printed and distributed to playtest participants for recording choices and feedback during story progression.
82 Example introductory slides to orient users to the story context, characters, explain the RES category gradient model, and to initialize these scores to 0. Participants were instructed to add/subtract values from these category scores throughout the playtest based on choices, random number generation, and coin flips, which they kept track of on their worksheets.
Example slides for linking to online random number and coin flip generators as a way to initialize the participants’ identity category and as an additional method for achieving divergent story paths (in addition to making different response choices).
83 Example slide for the resulting narrative content based on a response choice. In this example, the participants had the choice to either speak up to the teacher or not speak up to the teacher. Each choice afforded three different narrative content styles based on the engagement level associated with their current RES category scores.
After gathering feedback through play testing and collaborative narrative design critique, a detailed functional specification – which included narrative content, user interface (UI) requirements, and audio and visual assets for the VR gameplay experience – was authored to guide the production of a software prototype. The next section presents the design documentation (including procedure, methods, and functional specifications) for the software prototype of Passage Home VR.
3.2 Passage Home VR Prototype Overview
The following section describes the details, technical, and user experience requirements informing the implementation of the software prototype of Passage Home VR.
3.2.1 Description of Passage Home VR
Passage Home VR is a four to six minute interactive VR narrative experience which puts players into the role of a teenaged African American student named Tiffany who must
84 respond to a discriminatory racial encounter. This encounter takes place in the Honors
English classroom at Tiffany’s art and humanities charter high school, in which she is falsely accused of plagiarism by her English teacher, who is a white woman named Mrs.
Serilda, on an important essay she turned in.
3.2.1.1 Narrative Engine
The narrative engine design for in Passage Home VR was inspired by George Lakoff’s work in cognitive categorization [114] and Harrell et al.’s [115] computational elaboration of Lakoff’s theory of category gradience, which takes into account “the degree to which an actor deviates from a prototypical member of a category” and assigns “concrete categories to abstract ones differently at run-time to encompass multiple worldviews.”
The narrative engine uses four empirically-based themes of racial and ethnic socialization
(alertness to discrimination, cultural pride, mainstream fit, and promotion of distrust) as abstract categories. Player choices impact the levels associated with each abstract category. The identity representation model, detailed in Table 15, evaluates the levels of each abstract category and places players into one of three concrete identity categories:
(1) colorblind, (2) cultural coper, (3) distrusting coper, and one of three engagement categories: (1) disengaged, (2) moderately engaged, and (3) highly engaged.
Table 15: Identity representation model implemented in Passage Home VR.
85 Identity Model Representation Description
Visual representation of the four abstract categories which are used for concrete category assignment.
Colorblind category • Low alertness to discrimination • Low promotion of distrust • Low to medium cultural pride • High mainstream fit
Cultural pride coper category • Low mainstream fit • Medium to high alertness to discrimination • Medium promotion of distrust • High cultural pride
Distrusting coper category • Low mainstream fit • Medium to high alertness to discrimination • Medium cultural pride • High promotion of distrust
The user is initialized in the colorblind and disengaged categories by default. As the narrative progresses, players’ choices of body language updates the abstract category and coping response levels, with some choices having the same impact on changes to the
86 category levels, and other choices, introducing another dimension of variation in storyline branching. These updates shift players’ evaluation and placement in one of the three identity categories and one of the three engagement levels, which in turn customize the narrative content and experience as the game progresses.
Based on extensive research of human judgment of images of deliberately expressed facial expressions [121], the foremost classification tradition lists six basic, universally recognized emotions, which are: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust. The narrative engine was designed such that body language choices expressing happiness and/or fear
(reflective of an approach that attempts to appease the NPC or internalize the conflict of the encounter) shifted the user towards the “Colorblind” category. Body language choices expressing anger and/or surprise (reflective of an approach that recognized the discriminatory nature of the encounter and used an assertive approach) shifted the user towards the “Cultural Coper” category. Finally, body language choices expressing anger and/or disgust (reflective of an approach that recognized the discriminatory nature of the encounter and used a more withdrawing or avoidant approach) shifted the user towards the “Distrusting Coper” category.
With the core narrative events and decision points remaining constant, different content and styles of narrative scripts based on the player identity types were developed to shift the tone of both the first-person player-character’s thought and speech content (to reflect the various ways that prior RES experiences may impact how one thinks about and responds to racial discrimination), and the NPC’s speech content (to reflect the various
87 ways that prior RES experiences may impact the degree of perceived racial discrimination). The narrative engine was designed such that the NPC’s narrative content shifted towards containing more overt forms of racial discrimination when the player was evaluated to belong to the “Colorblind” category, with the motivation of making the discriminatory nature of the encounter more salient to players who have not been socialized to detect more subtle expressions of discrimination. As the user shifted towards the “Cultural Coper” and “Distrusting Coper” categories, the narrative content of the NPC was modified to employ more covert racial microaggressions and coded language that would be more easily recognizable to those who have been socialized to recognize various forms of bias. Examples of different category-based narrative content are presented in
Table 16.
Table 16: Examples of category-based narrative content styles in Passage Home VR.
Example Narrative Example Narrative Content for Category Content for Mrs. Tiffany Serilda Responses related to RES category: Colorblind Internal: “You can’t just cheat or • “Why would she call me angry? I’m not copy someone else trying to act angry at all… I just care because you want to do about my grade and don’t want to be well. There’s clearly a falsely accused of something I didn’t serious culture problem do...” at the schools you come • “What a day. My family always taught from. You might have me to work hard, to value my education, gotten away with things and to treat everyone equally and as like this in the past, but individuals, no matter what their you’ve got to work hard background is.” if you want to succeed at
88 External: a place like this, “Mrs. Serilda, I’m sorry but I’m confused as Tiffany.” to why you think I would cheat on my paper. I worked hard, and I want you to know that I really care about my grade this class… I even want to major in English in college!” Cultural Internal: “I suppose we should sit Coper • “Nothing about how I responded was down and talk about the aggressive. Mrs. Serilda’s coded language specific phrases I’m is not okay I’m not angry.. I care about concerned about, I just my academics and just want to stand up haven’t seen students for my hard work.” who come to my class • “What a day. My family always taught from your middle school me to work hard, to value my education, who write like this, and and to remember that although this use 12th grade society can be tough for people who look vocabulary words. I like me, I am talented and proud of who expected to write your I am and where I come from.” essay in your own External: language. I'm open to “...I'm sorry, Mrs. Serilda, but English is my you sharing your notes best subject in school. Are you suggesting I with me, but I need to plagiarized my essay simply because of the make sure this is original school I come from? I actually worked really work first.” hard on this. I spent hours on my essay and took it very seriously. I worked hard to get accepted into this school just like everyone else.” Distrusting Internal: “I’m not sure you Coper • “How am I supposed to trust teachers at understand what this school if they call me angry when I plagiarism is. This is an try to show that I care about my grades?” academic honesty issue. I • “What a day. My family always taught get it, students like you me to work hard, to value my education, struggle in English. But, and to remember that, unfortunately, at this school, we have there are some people who don’t want to higher standards than see people who look like me succeed, no what you’re used to matter how hard we work.” where you come from. I External: want to help you, I just “...I couldn't have written this?!! What's that wish you’d come to me supposed to mean? I spent hours on this instead of cheating and essay. Why would you assume I’m incapable stealing someone else’s of writing something of this quality because hard work.” of who I am? Would you say that to a white
89 student? I worked hard to get accepted into this school and deserve to be treated fairly.” Responses related to engagement category: Disengaged “I feel like I’m not getting anywhere with “Do you even care about Mrs. Serilda in this conversation. She’s not this, Tiffany? This is a hearing what I have to say… I can’t believe very serious matter. I she really thinks I would do something like wish I’d see you showing this on such a big assignment!” more concern about it instead of rolling your eyes and acting disrespectful towards me.” Moderately “I’ve always worked hard, and it's not fair "Tiffany, please watch Engaged that I'm being doubted for my writing your attitude. We talk to talents. I've got to stand up for myself.” teachers with respect here. There’s no need to act so angry with me." Highly “I really can’t believe Mrs. Serilda believes “Tiffany, I know it’s been Engaged she can make these kinds of wild accusations a challenging semester when I worked so hard on my essay. I can’t for you as a new student allow my character to be questioned like here, but you have been this.” acting really aggressive and angry lately. I’m going to arrange for you to work on your anger management with our counselor because I care about you.”
Finally, each combination of identity and engagement categories is associated with a different probability distribution to generate one of four narrative outcomes:
(1) Mrs. Serilda acknowledges that Tiffany has been a strong student since the beginning of the term, thanks Tiffany for her explanation, and decides to review the paper again over the weekend,
90 (2) Mrs. Serilda considers the possibility that Tiffany may not have plagiarized her essay, decides to review the paper again over the weekend, and asks Tiffany to meet with her to discuss it again next week,
(3) Mrs. Serilda insists that Tiffany plagiarized her essay because she is inadequately prepared for this level of work, asks her to rewrite her paper over the weekend, and offers to help her on future essays,
(4) Mrs. Serilda insists that Tiffany is lying about plagiarizing her essay, accuses Tiffany of making this into a “discrimination issue,” and calls for a parent-teacher conference with the Principal next week.
The narrative experience ends with a possibility of 20 different codas, based on the player’s identity category, engagement level, and the narrative outcome. The complete branching design of the interactive narrative is presented in Figure 7.
91
92
93
Figure 7: Possible narrative storyline branches in Passage Home VR. Diagram should be read
left to read, top to bottom.
3.2.2 Technical Implementation
The software prototype of Passage Home VR was authored in three.js (3D JavaScript) and can be played on iOS and Android mobile devices with the use of plastic and cardboard head-mounted displays (HMDs). Mobile computing platforms and low-cost
HMDs were used to reduce accessibility barriers (e.g., budget limitations) and support scalability for eventual deployment within the EMBRace intervention. The game was not implemented with a room-scale design paradigm and can therefore be played in standing or sitting position, without need for a dedicated empty space.
3.2.2.1 Player Experience
The narrative puts the player in a first-person perspective and enables the player to control a 3-dimensional representation of the body of the player character, Tiffany, to interact with the non-player character (NPC), Mrs. Serilda, in the game. The player is informed of the game mechanics and the story background through various information
94 dialogs presented in the UI. This information includes the establishing that Tiffany spent nights and weekends in the library working hard on her essay, that she is a passionate and high-achieving English student, and that she took this assignment very seriously. The player must select responses to narrative prompts from a set of predefined, 3D representations of Tiffany’s body with different body language (which encompasses both facial expression and gestures), which are shown in Table 17.
Table 17: Passage Home VR body language selection interface.
Choice Visual UI Body Language Descriptions
1. Yell with arms open Body
Language 2. Speak with arms at side Choice 1 3. Speak with arms crossed
1. Roll eyes with arms crossed Body Language 2. Scratch head with confusion Choice 2 3. Cry with arms crossed
1. Shake head with arms crossed Body 2. Speak with hands clenched Language 3. Speak with arms crossed Choice 3 4. Speak with arms at side 5. Cry with arms at side
95 1. Roll eyes with arms crossed Body 2. Look up with arms at side Language 3. Look down with hands Choice 4 clenched
3.2.2.2 System Interaction and UI Design
Player navigation in Passage Home VR occurs in three degrees of freedom (3DoF), which is enabled through the mobile device’s inbuilt sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers). The game uses gaze tracking and click input detection to enable interaction. Throughout the experience, a circular reticule is shown indicating the location of the player’s gaze in the virtual environment. When the reticule hovers over interactive objects, the area of the reticule expands to indicate a clicking affordance to the user. Table
18 describes the system responses triggered by various gaze and click based interactions in the game.
Table 18: Passage Home VR gaze and click interactions.
System Description Visual UI Interaction Response Object- Player The based hovers focus narrative information over experience dialog textbook begins object and with Mrs. clicks. Serilda’s narrative content
96 Non-player Player The character hovers focus narrative (NPC) over Mrs. progresses speech Serilda’s to the content UI body and next clicks. clause or event.
Information Player The panel UI hovers focus narrative over “X” progresses button to the below the next information clause or panel and event. clicks.
Body Player Unselected language hovers focus body selection over one of language UI Tiffany’s options body disappear; language selected options and body clicks. language presents narrative content. Player- Player The character hovers focus narrative (PC) over progresses thought Tiffany’s to the content UI body and next clicks. clause or event.
97 Player- Player The character hovers focus narrative speech over progresses content UI Tiffany’s to the body and next clicks. clause or event.
This chapter reviewed how playcentric design approach was used to implement an initial software prototype of Passage Home VR, an interactive VR narrative with an embedded identity model grounded in RES theory. The next section reviews the experimental setup, results, and findings of a user study which was used to playtest and evaluate the current software prototype. The study specifically investigated the efficacy of the RES identity model for engaging interactive storytelling and the relationship between players’ RES and their in-game behavior and narrative interpretations. The analysis of the data collected will guide the future production and evaluation of a system intended for therapeutic roleplaying within EMBRace, an intervention focused on racial and ethnic socialization and reducing race-based traumatic stress.
98 Chapter 4
Passage Home VR User Study
This thesis contributes both theory and technology to support racial and ethnic identity representations in interactive narrative systems. These contributions include: (1) the development of Passage Home VR, an interactive VR narrative embedded with a novel
RES identity model and simulates an encounter of racial injustice, and (2) a user study data analysis proposing new theory on how players’ RES informs their in-game behavior and narrative interpretations. This chapter presents the procedure, results, and analysis of a user study which evaluated a software prototype of Passage Home VR,.
4.1 User Study Participants and Procedure
The user study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of embedding a computational model of racial ethnic socialization (RES) to support compelling interactive storytelling in VR thematically focused on discriminatory racial encounters. The user study protocol presented in this section was reviewed and approved by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Institutional Review Board (IRB) Committee on the Use of
Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES).
4.1.1 Participants
99 Study participants were recruited via emails to several MIT undergraduate and graduate student listservs and using flyers distributed on MIT’s campus using IRB-approved emails and flyers. Participants were not compensated in any way for participation in the study.
The demographic information summarized in this section is also presented in Figure 8.
17 participants between the ages of 18 and 40 completed the study. 70.6% (12/17) of participants were Millennials, 17.6% (3/17) of participants were Post-Millennials, and
11.8% (2/17) of participants were Generation Xers. The gender composition of the participants was 64.7% (11/17) female and 35.3% (6/17) male. The occupational composition of the participants was 58.8% (10/17) professionals, 29.4% (5/17) students, and 11.8% (2/17) professionals who are also students. The racial composition of participants was 41.2% (7/17) black, 41.2% (7/17) white, and 17.6% (3/17) Asian. 76.5%
(13/17) of participants grew up in the United States (U.S.), and 23.5% (4/17) of participants grew up in countries outside of the United States. In terms of regions represented within the U.S., 52.9% (9/17) of overall participants grew up on the East
Coast, 11.8% (2/17) grew up on the West Coast, 5.9% (1/17) grew up in the Midwest, and 5.9% (1/17) grew up in the Deep South. In terms of regions represented outside of the U.S., 5.9% (1/17) of overall participants grew up in Southeast Asia, 5.9% (1/17) of participants grew up in East Africa, and 11.8% (2/17) of participants grew up in two different continents (one of these participants grew up in North Africa and Western
Europe; the other participant grew up on West Africa and Northwestern Europe).
100
Figure 8: User study participant demographics. Demographic information collected included
gender, race, age, occupation, and place of origin.
4.1.2 Procedure
Participants were required to complete an IRB-approved non-biomedical research consent form to sign up for the user study. Upon return of the completed consent form, participants scheduled a 1-hour in-person study session which took place on MIT’s campus in the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab). The study protocol consisted of four parts: (1) participants completed a pre-assessment using an online survey which included the Racial Bias Preparation Scale (RBPS) [116] and Color- blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) [117], (2) participants were asked to play through
101 Passage Home VR up to two times while seated in a swivel chair using a smartphone head-mounted device (HMD) while their in-game behavior was captured using screen recording (as shown in Figure 9), (3) participants completed a post-assessment survey which included the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) [118, 119] Core Module, In-
Game GEQ, and Social Presence Module, System Usability Survey (SUS) [120], and demographic questions, and (4) participants completed a recorded semi-structured interview which provided in-depth qualitative data on players’ experiences with RES as well as their in-game behavioral strategies and interpretations of the narrative. A summary of the validated assessment tools used in the pre- and post- assessments are presented in Table 19 and are further explained in the following sections.
Figure 9: User study setup using swivel chair and smartphone HMD. Players’ in-game behavior
was captured using screen recording.
102
Table 19: Summary of validated survey instruments used in user study.
Purpose of Instrument Description Use Racial Bias • Measures frequency of caregiver-adolescent Inform players’ Preparation messages on preparation for living in a RES Scale (RBPS) multiethnic society backgrounds to • 30-item questionnaire (with 10 questions accompany each for reactive, proactive, and contrast qualitative messages) with 3 response options ranging interview data from “never,” to “a few times,” and “a lot” Color-Blind • Assesses cognitive aspects of color-blind Inform players’ Racial racial attitudes current levels of Attitudes • A 20-item questionnaire (with 7 questions awareness to Scale on unawareness of racial privilege, 7 various types of (CoBRAS) questions on institutional discrimination, individual, social, and 6 questions on blatant racial issues) and institutional with 6 response options ranging from racial “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” discrimination Game • GEQ Core Module assesses players’ game Evaluation of Experience experience across seven components: how immersed Questionnaire Immersion, Flow, Competence, Positive and and engaged (GEQ) Negative Affect, Tension, and Challenge players felt • 33-item questionnaire with 5 response during options ranging from “not at all” to videogame and “extremely” their enjoyment • GEQ Social Presence Module assesses Evaluation of players’ psychological and behavioral players’ feelings involvement with other social entities in a of agency and game (e.g., in-game characters, others control of and playing online, or co-located players) involvement with • 17-item questionnaire with 5 response videogame options ranging from “not at all” to characters and “extremely” narrative System • Evaluates overall usability and ease of use Evaluation of Usability Scale of a technical system videogame (SUS) • 10-item questionnaire with 5 response system usability options ranging from “strongly disagree” to and interface “strongly agree” quality
103 4.1.2.1 Racial Bias Preparation Scale (RBPS)
The racial bias preparation scale (RBPS) measures “the frequency with which adolescents perceive that they experience messages from their primary caretakers in preparation for living in a multiethnic society” [116], including reactive messages (focused on increasing awareness of racial and ethnic prejudice), proactive messages (focused on reinforcing racial and ethnic pride), and contrast items (focused on racial and ethnic egalitarianism).
Research using this instrument has found that racial bias preparation is associated with distress response to institutional and educational discrimination, and self-esteem scores are negatively correlated with distress in response to these forms of discrimination.
The RBPS produces two values representing the frequency of proactive messages and reactive messages received related to racial bias during adolescence. The possible scores for summed reactive and proactive messages range from 10 to 30. Higher scores correspond to a greater frequency of experiencing messages of that type from primary caretakers during adolescence. According to the original publication, the multigroup summed average score results were: (1) reactive messages (M=16.19, SD=4.67), (2) proactive messages
(M=20.40, SD=4.55).
4.1.2.2 Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS)
The colorblind racial attitudes scale (CoBRAS) is a conceptually grounded instrument which assesses cognitive aspects of colorblind racial attitudes across three factors: unawareness of (1) racial privilege (RP), (2) institutional discrimination (ID), and (3)
104 blatant racial issues (BRI). Research on color-blind racial attitudes using this instrument has found that higher scores on each of the CoBRAS factors are related to greater beliefs that society is fair and just and greater levels of racial prejudice and intolerance [117].
The CoBRAS produces three values, with possible scores for unawareness of RP and ID ranging from 7 to 42, and possible scores for unawareness of BRI ranging from 6 to 36.
Higher scores correspond to a greater level of unawareness for each factor. According to the original publication, the multigroup average scores and standard deviations for each of the factors of the CoBRAS were as follows: (1) unawareness of RP (M=22.82,
SD=5.29), (2) unawareness of ID (M=17.79, SD=5.67), and (3) unawareness of BRI
(M=9.61, SD=3.42).
4.1.2.3 In-Game Screen Capture
Participants were asked to play through Passage Home VR up to two times. During game play, screen capture was used to record players’ game traces and follow the evolution of game state from start to finish. The screen captures showed where and how long participants looked around in the immersive virtual environment, how many times the users played through the game, their interaction behavior, and every game state event
(including the identity categorization and coping engagement level at each evaluation point in the sequence). Following data collection, all of this information was extracted from the screen recordings into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
105 4.1.2.4 Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ)
The game experience questionnaire (GEQ) is a multi-module assessment tool used to better understand players’ feelings and thoughts while playing games [118, 119]. In this study, two of the three modules of the GEQ were used: (1) the core questionnaire and (2) the social presence module.
The core questionnaire of the GEQ produces a value between 0 and 4 for each of the following seven components: (1) immersion, (2) flow, (3) competence, (4) positive affect,
(5) negative affect, (6) tension, and (7) challenge. The social presence module of the GEQ produces a value between 0 and 4 for each of the following three components: (1) psychological involvement – empathy, (2) psychological involvement – negative feelings,
(3) behavioral involvement.
4.1.2.5 System Usability Scale (SUS)
The System Usability Scale (SUS) provides a reliable measure of the overall usability and ease of use of a technical system, producing a value between 0 and 100 to represent the composite evaluation [120]. This instrument queries players to provide a subjective evaluation of three aspects of usability: (1) effectiveness (did users feel they were able to successfully achieve their objectives), (2) efficiency (how much effort and resource expenditure did users feel they had to put in to achieve those objectives), and (3) satisfaction (did users feel satisfied with their overall experience). The average SUS score is a 68.
106
4.1.2.6 Semi-Structured Interview
During the semi-structured interview, participants were asked questions about their parent-adolescent racial and ethnic socialization (RES) experiences, racial identity formation, attitudes about the portrayal of race in the media, and their impressions and interpretations of Passage Home VR, and the strategies they used during the game. Audio recordings of each interview were captured and sent to an audio transcription service to be converted into text files for qualitative analysis following study completion.
The transcribed interview data was analyzed using Glaser & Strauss’ grounded theory methods [122] by the author and one additional co-rater to improve reliability.
Conceptual categories were generated in an inductive way through open coding of the qualitative data collected for each the five interview question topics: (1) racial and ethnic socialization and identity experiences, (2) views towards the portrayal of race in the media,
(3) in-game strategies and behavior, (4) perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination, and (5) thematic narrative analyses. Inter-raters were tasked with describing their systematic annotations for each of these five topics in single words or short sequence of words. The individually-constructed descriptions generated from conceptual memoing were collaboratively discussed. Upon reaching “theoretical saturation” [123] of the empirical data, these concepts were integrated into the final, core characterizations found in the results.
107 4.2 User Study Results and Analysis
The following section presents the quantitative and qualitative results of the user study evaluating a software prototype of Passage Home VR. These results include data on system usability and game experience, as well as behavioral and social science results informing players’ RES backgrounds, in-game actions, and their narrative interpretations.
4.2.1 System Usability and Experience Results
Passage Home VR was given an average usability score of 84.8 by participants with a standard deviation of 0.5. This score, which is well above average, suggests that the user experience of Passage Home VR is well above average and sufficiently met players’ usability needs during the gameplay experience. It also suggests that the majority of players enjoyed their overall experience using the system. The SUS results summarized in this section are also presented in Figure 10.
108
Figure 10: Histogram of participants’ SUS results (M=84.8, SD=0.5).
In this study, the average of participants’ scores and standard deviations for each of the components of the core GEQ module were as follows: (1) immersion (M=2.8, SD=0.80),
(2) flow (M=3.2, SD=0.79), (3) competence (M=2.1, SD=0.95), (4) positive affect
(M=1.7, SD=1.00), (5) negative affect (M=1.0, SD=0.69), (6) tension (M=2.1, SD=1.51), and (7) challenge (M=1.5, SD=1.14). This suggests that Passage Home VR kept players in flow, was highly immersive, and was more of a positive than negative experience.
For the GEQ social presence module, the average of participants’ scores and standard deviations for each of the components were as follows: (1) psychological involvement – empathy (M=0.5, SD=0.71), (2) psychological involvement – negative feelings (M=1.8,
109 SD=0.77), (3) behavioral involvement (M=2.1, SD=0.71). This suggests that players held negative feelings towards the non-player character (NPC), Mrs. Serilda, more than they empathized with her, and felt that their actions and choices affected what occurred in the game. The GEQ results summarized in this section are also presented in Figure 11.
110
Figure 11: Participant GEQ core and social presence module results. Bars represent subscale
means. Error bars represent subscale standard deviations.
4.2.2 Behavioral and Social Science Results
A core research question of this thesis is understanding how players’ RES background influences how they interpret and behave within interactive VR narratives focused on the issue of racial discrimination. The following sections present the data collected on how players were socialized to think about race by their primary caregivers while growing up, and their self-reported narrative interpretations and behavioral strategies while playing
Passage Home VR.
111 4.2.2.1 Racial Bias Preparation Scale (RBPS)
In this study, the average of participants’ summed scores were: (1) reactive messages
(M=16.9, SD=6.4), (2) proactive messages (M=18.6, SD=5.6). This suggests that participants received more exposure to racial preparation messages emphasizing an awareness of prejudice and less exposure to racial preparation messages reinforcing racial and ethnic pride during adolescence than the baseline sample. The RBPS results summarized in this section are also presented in
Figure 12.
Figure 12: Participant RBPS results. Bars represent subscale means. Error bars represent
subscale standard deviations.
112
4.2.2.2 Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS)
In this study, the average of participants’ scores and standard deviations for each of the factors of the CoBRAS were as follows: (1) unawareness of racial privilege (RP) (M=16.2,
SD=6.2), (2) unawareness of institutional discrimination (ID) (M=15.6, SD=4.8), and
(3) unawareness of blatant racial issues (BRI) (M=9.2, SD=3.2). This suggests that participants had a greater awareness of RP, ID, and BRI compared to the baseline sample. The CoBRAS results summarized in this section are also presented in
Figure 13.
113 Figure 13: Participant CoBRAS results. Bars represent subscale means. Error bars represent
subscale standard deviations.
4.2.2.3 In-Game Screen Capture
82.4% (14/17) of participants played through the game two times, and 17.6% (3/17) of participants played through the game a single time. Of the 3 participants who played through the game only once, 2 did not cite a reason, and 1 participant (who self-identified as a black female) verbally expressed the following reason for not playing the game a second time:
“[I did not want to play the game again after the first time] because ... it
was personal for me ‘cause it was like it was something that I feel like I've
been through. It was just personal. It was just like angry, I just feel like it
was a little negative. It made me feel all these kind of emotions. So I just
was like, ‘Yeah. I don't wanna read that again. I'm good.’”
Table 20 presents a breakdown of players’ body language choices, final identity categorization and engagement levels, and narrative outcome across playthrough 1
(featuring the behavior of all 17 participants who played through at least once) and playthrough 2 (featuring the behavior of the 14 participants who played through a second time).
Table 20: In-game player behavior and outcomes in Passage Home VR.
114 Game Event Item Playthrough 1 Playthrough 2 Body 11.8% 14.3% Yell with arms open Language (2/17) (2/14) Choice 1 64.7% 50% Speak with arms at side (11/17) (7/14) 23.5% 35.7% Speak with arms crossed (4/17) (5/14) Body 35.3% 50% Roll eyes with arms crossed Language (6/17) (7/14) Choice 2 Scratch head with 47.1% 14.3% confusion (8/17) (2/14) 17.6% 35.7% Cry with arms crossed (3/17) (5/14) Body Shake head with arms 35.3% 35.7% Language crossed (6/17) (5/14) Choice 3 29.4% 21.4% Speak with hands clenched (5/17) (3/14) 5.9% 35.7% Speak with arms crossed (1/17) (5/14) 17.6% 0% Speak with arms at side (3/17) (0/14) 11.8% 2.6% Cry with arms at side (2/17) (1/14) Body 29.4% 42.9% Roll eyes with arms crossed Language (5/17) (6/14) Choice 4 47.1% 35.7% Look up with arms at side (8/17) (5/14) Look down with hands 23.5% 21.4% clenched (4/17) (3/14) Final RES 47.1% 14.2% Colorblind Category (8/17) (2/14) 35.3% 42.9% Cultural Coper (6/17) (6/14) 17.6% 42.9% Distrusting Coper (3/17) (6/14) Final 47.1% 42.85% Disengaged Engagement (8/17) (6/14) Level 23.5% 21.4% Moderately Engaged (4/17) (3/14) 29.4% 35.7% Highly Engaged (5/17) (5/14) 17.6% 7.1% Outcome 1 (3/17) (1/14)
115 Narrative 11.8% 14.3% Outcome 2 Outcome (2/17) (2/14) 47.1% 50% Outcome 3 (8/17) (7/14) 23.5% 28.6% Outcome 4 (4/17) (4/14)
4.2.2.4 Emergent Themes from Semi-Structured Interview
The average interview duration was 21 minutes and 49 seconds, with the shortest interview lasting 14 minutes and 57 seconds and the longest interview lasting 29 minutes and 44 seconds. Although the study was conducted with a small sample size, a substantial amount of interview data was collected and analyzed. Since the motivation in conducting interviews was to obtain qualitative data on the impact of a computational model of RES on an interactive VR narrative, we view the resulting authenticity of users’ qualitative responses as predilected by the small sample size.
A thorough analysis of the data yielded themes characterizing players’ responses to interview questions on their: (1) racial and ethnic socialization and identity experiences,
(2) views towards the portrayal of race in the media, (3) in-game strategies and behavior,
(4) perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination, and (5) thematic narrative analyses.
Descriptions of the themes that emerged for each of these interview topics are presented and characterized with example interview transcript excerpts in Table 21. A larger body of transcribed interview data demonstrating these themes can be found in the appendix.
116 Table 21: Emergent themes from semi-structured interview data analysis. Additional example
interview excerpts demonstrating the emergent themes can be found in Appendix II.
Theme Theme description Example interview excerpt
Questions on RES and identity development: Silence About Lack of explicit “My parents are immigrants from China, Race discussion about race, and I grew up in a primarily suburban kind prejudice, or of area, and I guess because sometimes discrimination; their values conflicted with the values of messages focused on the people around me at school, there was reinforcement of some conflict there, but over the past abstract, ethical ideals several years, I would learn to appreciate of treating others my parents for the support ... They didn’t equally. Related to really have any serious discussions with me egalitarianism and about race and discrimination. Their colorblindness RES general values are treat everybody equally, practices. and have the golden rule. Respect others the way you want them to respect you.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=20 CoBRAS Scores: RP=24, ID=20, BRI=12 Expressions of Covert and overt “I was very much taught that people of White messages of white various racial or ethnic minority Supremacy racial superiority in backgrounds had it way easier than they comparison to racial claimed and that if they weren't getting and ethnic minority anywhere in life, that they were just lazy, groups. Related to that they were a drain on the system … promotion of distrust When it came to business dealings for my RES practices, but parents, there were certainly a lot of specifically focused on comments about, ‘Oh, those dirty maintaining social Armenians trying to scam us,’ and lots of distance from racial comments about, ‘people being Jewey’ if and ethnic minorities. they tried too hard to hold onto their money. Things like that. So, I very early on, learned that my parents had these beliefs and I did not share them or understand them.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=14
117 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=10, BRI=6 Caution Covert and overt “Usually race only came up when negative Towards messages cautioning things happened, and it was just like, White People individuals’ ‘yeah, the world is never going to be fair to interactions with white you.’ I think for my mom, there were times people to buffer where it was like ‘the world is not going to against discrimination. be fair.’ Sometimes whenever I got on her Related to promotion nerves, she would stay stuff about how of distrust RES because I’m pursuing education and stuff practices, but like that, she’d say how white people are specifically focused on making me think that I’m one of them and maintaining social that I’ll never be one of them, and they’ll distance from white never treat me like one of their own … people. There was no real coping; it was kind of just like ‘this is the world and you just have to be stronger than it.’”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=15 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=13, BRI=6 Anticipation Messages emphasizing “I have a family that is very deeply rooted of Bias wariness towards especially on my dad's side of family and structural systems of the struggle. My dad, for instance, he had oppression and the been in the first generation of people who inevitability of were integrated … My dad's cousin, I don't discriminatory racial know how many relations removed, was encounters, without bombed by a KKK member when he got a necessarily providing job promotion … [My parents] would preparation for coping always tell me, ‘You'll always have to work with them. Related to twice or three times as hard as a white alertness to counterpart.’ Or sometimes when you walk discrimination RES into a room you might be the only person practices. of your background of your heritage.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=28 CoBRAS Scores: RP=9, ID=10, BRI=8 Individual Messages reinforcing “I remember when I moved to [East Coast Identity the value of diversity, city] when I was 10 or 11 for fifth, sixth Affirmation cultural pride, history, grade, so middle school time, I was like, and legacy and ‘No one looks like me here. I feel really emphasizing high self- stressed about it.’ My mom was like, ‘Well, esteem within a we can try to get more involved in the multicultural society. Indian community things. Maybe you'll Related to cultural meet more people who are like you.’
118 socialization RES Because it was always like being proud of practices. your own race and heritage, and everything. That's a great thing to share with people, not more like only hang out with Indian people. So then, I ended up meeting with people who were more like from my background which didn't go that smoothly because a lot of the immigrant community who's Indian, they're born here as well. When their parents came at a time when it was very fashionable to get rid of being Indian, so you change your name from one thing to a more American name, and things like that. My parents were like, ‘Look, they can learn to say Sacagawea, they can learn to say [subject's first name].’ Don't say your name is Susan or Son, or none of that stuff. Be honest. You're from India. You're born there. Your family’s there. That’s what it is.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7
119 Identity Experiences and “I was always been called ‘Oreo’ or a few Negotiation messages highlighting would say I was white on the inside and the tension of black on the outside. What does that negotiating one’s mean? Meaning that my success or the fact individual racial that I was eloquent or the fact that I identity with racial succeeded in orchestra or I succeeded in group membership, academics was due to the fact that my dad and between parents’ was white. So, I didn't like the fact that RES practices and my mom would always bring up race, but pressures felt from I knew that was a very important participant’s conversation and ... in the beginning I liked community or the the fact that my dad didn't bring up race media. Often because I didn't want to talk about it. But associated with as I got older I realized that that was participants something he never could really talk about. highlighting shortfalls My dad always supported me even when I of egalitarianism and felt like [people were being] prejudiced, but colorblindness RES he never could give any information to that practices upon end.” reaching adulthood. Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=22, Proactive=26 CoBRAS Scores: RP=14, ID=17, BRI=8 Dismantling Messages emphasizing “I definitely grew up very privileged in Racism personal and terms of my community, my white, whiter, institutional efforts to village. And so it was always important to stand up against white my parents that we stood up for injustice supremacy and whenever we saw it. At the time when I structural forms of grew up in a rough and tumble type of oppression. Related to neighborhood and part of our community cultural socialization in my formative years was also sort of RES practices. relayed around church, and so my parish had a strong Latino/Latina population primarily from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico; Haiti. And so we were taught to be very cognizant of what we had and what others might not and to be aware of that in sensitive ways.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=12, Proactive=16 CoBRAS Scores: RP=8, ID=8, BRI=6 Questions on media portrayal of race:
120 Lack of Middle Perspectives “The media gets sort of both sides, where Ground emphasizing the sometimes it's taken out of the equation media’s failure to and sometimes it's unnecessarily brought capture a sensible into the equation. Things like, you know, if middle ground an incident happens then there's a need to between extreme pronounce a person as a black male, versus viewpoints towards if the same thing is done by a white male, racism: one side which it's just a male. Things like, you know, overemphasizes race, [like] a terrorist or whatever … It sounds and one side which like the media treats it like it's not that big refuses to acknowledge a deal, and it doesn't happen to everybody, racism. and so we shouldn't think that every situation refers to that. Which I think is true, not every situation may be that, but it's also very unfair to disregard it in every situation.”
Participant Race and Gender: black male RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=12 CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=16, BRI=8 Focus on Race Perspectives noting “I would say, on TV when I was growing Paragons representations of up, I watched That's So Raven, which is racial paragons which about a black girl. And The Proud Family, either perpetuate which is a black family. So I kind of harmful racial gravitated toward those images, but it was stereotypes or feature inescapable watching shows and movies exceptional, over- like High School Musical or Hannah achieving people of Montana, where the whole cast is white. Or color, and a lack of there's that one black person, or so on or ordinary so forth. So that was me watching TV. I representations. think on the news, it was mainly images of violence. And even Facebook today, like more in more recent years, I think is usually a hashtag black excellence, which is usually exceptions to the rule, where it's not like just average black people. It's either black people who are shooting up other black people and doing drugs, or... Jay-Z and Beyoncé who are like super, super rich and it's like you can be either of these things, but like I would say the images of just the average black family are things that I'm seeing more and more, but it's like, ‘Oh wow, there's this new show about this average black person? Like this
121 is really novel to me.’ So that's usually the reaction that I have to that.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=25, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=11, BRI=6 Optimism Perspectives “I think very, very slowly, it's starting to Towards acknowledging current be more open, because in New York, I see Improved problems with media a bunch of advertisements there, and Representation representation of race, slowly I've been starting to see ads where but optimistic about it's the skeletons and then the hands shifts towards more holding … More stuff like that is very diversity and inclusion. slowly coming up, so that's good. But overall, I don't know. I don't think it's too open yet. I think a lot of people say like, ‘Oh, I judge people on character,’ but don't do it as much as they say it. So I would want people to do that more.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=19 CoBRAS Scores: RP=29, ID=18, BRI=11 Questions on players’ gameplay strategies: Real-World Strategies which “First time around, I definitely went with Identity mirror the approaches trying to be as non-confrontational and as Mirroring player would take in passive and as non-aggressive as I possibly the physical world could and that route was not at all based on their social rewarded in the context of this game, identity. which was very frustrating because that's my own natural tendency is to constantly try to de-escalate the situation while also still staying true to what I know is right. For the second play-through, I decided to try for a more aggressive and firm approach, and it honestly made me a little anxious to do it because I was very invested and it very much goes against my own natural tendencies, but it was more rewarded with how the teacher responded to me. That was very interesting to me that it was almost like I had tried to be perfectly pleasant and all smiles and was accused of being aggressive, and then, I
122 guess, in my head, my own response was, ‘Oh, you want to see aggressive?,’ and kind of stepped up to what her expectation was and almost meeting it, but not going further than that. It seemed to get me the more closely the results that I wanted.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=14 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=10, BRI=6 Avoidance of Strategies focused on “It was hard because I always want to be Stereotypes the avoidance of understanding … I never wanna be like conforming to negative that, like power-, like race-driven, like stereotypes about opinionated person. But there's a place for black people. that. I just felt like it was really hard for me to like ‘cause like the me, the passionate me, wants to like charge and sit, and take stand. But then the other part of me is like, ‘Is this worth it?’ I was really fighting when I was like kind of like clicking on those things ... It was just really hard to pick a side ‘cause you don’t wanna be militant and you don’t wanna go after someone who may not understand. … It was really hard for me because like, again, I go back to the way I feel like you shouldn’t speak to any young person in a certain way. You should never be accusatory of any young person like that. I don't feel like that was positive.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=26 CoBRAS Scores: RP=22, ID=19, BRI=12
123 Focus on Play- and outcome- “I took two different strategies. The first Exploration focused strategies one was taking the angry path. This is the and Outcomes attempting different opposite of what I would do in real life. choices to discover Very not me at all. I kinda wanted to see interesting or ideal ... It was good for me to, not like I was fully possibilities for roleplaying, but I was curious to see how narrative outcomes. that was going. Also, my roommate right now is black, and he conveys these types of interactions that he has with people and how he gets perceived if he gets angry. I wanted to see what happened when I went down that path, which didn't seem to do that much. Well, okay, sorry. It didn't make it better. The first time, the theme was me standing up for myself and it having no effect or even ill-effect, and the teacher just not even listening. The second time around, I took the more upset route and she seemed to respond better to that, but still not great. Occasionally it was trying to communicate, ‘How come you don't believe the things that I'm saying? How come you don't believe my experience?’”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=18, ID=25, BRI=14 Perceptions of evidence of discrimination in narrative: Lack of Narrative “I don't really remember how the teacher Evidence interpretations which treated her peers, but I feel like, in some of did not perceive what I read, [Tiffany] had an inner adequate evidence of bitterness, I would say. ‘Cause from the identity-based responses she thought she was being picked discrimination. on or something like that … At first, she was saying I think some of you did this and that [plagiarized], but she didn't state the names, but when [Tiffany] came up she had a lot to say about her … [Mrs. Serilda said] nothing [explicitly racist] that I remember.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=21, Proactive=24 CoBRAS Scores: RP=27, ID=17, BRI=16
124 Ambivalent Narrative “This is the kinda situation where like if it Evidence interpretations happened to me or when it did happen to featuring ambivalence me, I didn't immediately associate it with towards evidence of race. I was just like, something's wrong identity-based with me as a person or something like that, discrimination. or some ... putting a lot of blame on myself as an individual. But now looking back or now I can see it when it's happening, it's just like the idea of race as being exactly how someone sees you … There's always a stereotype that's a negative one that I will have to work against … There's like a sneaking suspicion I feel like you have when you're a minority being like, ‘Is it because of my race or not?’”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7 Conclusive Narrative “I do think race played a huge role in the Evidence interpretations bias around automatically assuming that, perceiving concrete just because this student was black, that evidence of identity- she could not write at the same level as based discrimination. what she was succeeding in. Therefore, it must be plagiarism.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=10, ID=9, BRI=6
Thematic narrative analyses: Assumed Thematic analysis “It’s just like the idea of race as being Incompetence centered on idea of exactly how someone sees you. Basically, with emphasis having your abilities that's the first impression that they have. on racial doubted by people in And that like ... it doesn't really matter identity positions of authority how eloquently I think or speak, or write, based on assumptions or whatever. That is still the first about your abilities, impression they have of me. So either way, and strategies for self- I'm working with trying to either for advocacy. These myself, proving them right that I am the interpretations smart, brown girl or whatever. Or proving acknowledged the role them wrong that I'm better than what they of racial and gender immediately associated me to be, whether that means I'm more multidimensional or
125 identity in having kinder, or have more facets or something one’s abilities doubted. like that. There's always a stereotype that's a negative one that I will have to work against.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7 Assumed Thematic analysis “One theme that comes to mind is the idea Incompetence centered on idea of of autonomy and choice and just a person without having your abilities being able to do what they want, but like mention of doubted by people in a figure of authority, specifically a teacher, racial identity positions of authority just exercising power over you and telling based on assumptions you that what you did do was either not about your abilities, enough or not acceptable for reasons and strategies for self- outside of your control. I feel like this is, advocacy. These I think that this is trying, the game is interpretations did not trying to teach people, trying to give explicitly mention the people a more emotional experience of role of racial and what it's like to have someone like that, gender identity in like a teacher, who you're taught to respect having one’s abilities and you're taught is like supposed to help doubted. you learn and grow. Like give you that experience of them just not caring about the work that you do or like caring about your experience because they would rather impose what they think on your life, as opposed to listening to what you're saying. And I think it's especially important, like I think that this is really, it does a good job of like giving a real world example of this.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=25, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=11, BRI=6
126 Building Thematic analysis “[A white male playing this game] probably Empathy centered on idea of has never seen anything like this before. using immersion to He's probably never been assumed to be raise awareness of how guilty of something … I'm going to guess racial discrimination that people haven’t said that ‘you are not manifests in everyday capable’ and ‘you cheated because your life encounters and work was too good,’ or kind of spoken to promote empathy him in a way that they just didn't believe towards the racialized in him. Keeping that in mind, it just made experiences of people me think that maybe this game is showing of color. people the identities of all kinds of people. Showing those identities and how they're received and perceived so that they can get, in whatever way, kind of like a little glimpse of that experience. I guess also understanding how body language is viewed, understanding how your responses to things will get you certain answers or whatever, or recognizing that the world will see you as a completely different person, even if you're doing the exact same thing.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=15 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=13, BRI=6 Investigation Thematic analysis “I feel like, in some of what I read, [Tiffany] of Truth centered on digging had an inner bitterness, I would say. deeper than the surface ‘Cause from the responses she thought she level to investigate and was being picked on or something like that discover the history or ... it looked like maybe they had a history truth behind an of this type of conversations and the lack accusation. of being listened to. From what I could tell, maybe she had something that had happened before and she didn't feel like someone listened to her or put into consideration of what she had to say … It's kind of tricky. I feel like if it was a white male [playing the game], they would think the girl [Tiffany] is trying to be and kind of wants to be sympathized with as opposed to doing the right thing. That's what I think and feel but I can't tell.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female
127 RBPS Scores: Reactive=21, Proactive=24 CoBRAS Scores: RP=27, ID=17, BRI=16
Regarding the data summarized on participants’ RES experiences, it is important to note that many participants reported their caregivers employing combinations of multiple RES strategies while growing up. The seven clusters which emerged from the transcribed interview data on participants’ RES and identity experiences are:
(1) silence about race,
(2) expressions of white supremacy,
(3) caution towards white people,
(4) anticipation of bias,
(5) individual identity affirmation,
(6) identity negotiation, and
(7) dismantling racism.
The three types of accounts provided for how the media portrays race were:
(1) lack of middle ground,
(2) focus on race paragons, and
(3) optimism towards improved representation.
Participants described three types of strategic approaches to playing the game:
(1) real-world identity mirroring,
(2) avoidance of stereotypes, and
(3) focus on exploration and outcomes.
128 Participants interpreted evidence of racial discrimination in the narrative in three ways:
(1) lack of evidence,
(2) ambivalent evidence, and
(3) conclusive evidence.
Finally, participants described four broad thematic narrative analyses:
(1) assumed incompetence with explicit mention of how racial identity affects these assumptions,
(2) assumed incompetence without mention of racial identity,
(3) building empathy, and
(4) investigation of truth.
4.2.2.5 Players’ RES Backgrounds
Although new labels were applied to the emergent patterns in participants’ RES backgrounds shown in Table 21, these descriptions were mapped to existing labels used in empirical RES research: cultural socialization, colorblindness, egalitarianism, alertness to discrimination, preparation for bias, and promotion of distrust. The only exception is that the term “white supremacy” is used in combination with promotion of distrust to differentiate these messages those received by participants of color. A summary of participants overall RES experiences and breakdowns by race can be found in Figures 14 and 15.
129 Slightly more than half of participants (52.9%, 9/17) reported colorblind and egalitarian
RES experiences from their parents while growing up, and all races were represented in this group. The majority of white participants (57.1%, 4/7) were in the colorblind/egalitarian RES group. Although the majority of the 3 total Asian participants reported colorblind and/or egalitarian RES experiences (66.7%, 2/3), the very limited sample size of this subgroup should be considered. Of the remaining 6 participants, all but 1 of these participants (83.3%, 5/6) reported RES practices associated with alertness to discrimination combined with cultural socialization while growing up. The majority of the 5 participants who reported alertness to discrimination and cultural socialization RES practices were black (80%, 4/5). 60% (3/5) of these participants also noted preparation for bias RES messages, and 20% (1/5) of these participants also noted some promotion of distrust messages while growing up.
Only 4 participants in the entire study reported experiencing RES practices associated with promotion of distrust while growing up. 50% (2/4) of these participants, who were both white females, reported explicit white supremacist RES messages from their parents
(combined with contradictory messages emphasizing an egalitarian society based on individual hard work, and a lack of acknowledgement to institutional discrimination). 50%
(2/4) of these participants, who were black females, reported RES messages emphasizing cautions about closeness to white people while growing up. One of these black female participants also self-reported preparation for bias and cultural socialization messages,
130 and the other black female participant also self-reported alertness to discrimination
(without any preparation for bias) messages.
There was significant diversity in RES practices reported by the seven total black participants. An equal number of these participants reported colorblindness (42.9%, 3/7) or preparation for bias combined with cultural socialization (42.9%, 3/7). 1 of the 3 participants who reported preparation for bias and cultural socialization also self-reported some promotion of distrust messages. The one remaining participant reported alertness to discrimination combined with promotion of distrust (14.3%, 1/7).
131 Figure 14: Distribution of participants’ self-reported RES. Abbreviations for RES practices are
used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination, PB =
preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy, PD = promotion of
distrust).
132 Figure 15: Distribution of participants’ self-reported RES by race. Abbreviations for RES practices are used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination,
PB = preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy, PD =
promotion of distrust).
4.2.2.6 Players’ In-Game Behavior
The overall results of players final identity categorizations (resulting from their in-game choices) and breakdowns by RES backgrounds across playthroughs 1 and 2 are shown in
Figures 16, 17, and 18. Substantial differences in player behavior were indeed observed between body language choices (and the resulting identity category memberships) between playthroughs 1 and 2.
By the end of playthrough 1, 47.1% of participants (8/17) were placed in the “Colorblind” identity category (for which the narrative content was associated with egalitarian and colorblind RES practices) by the narrative engine. 75% (6/8) of these players self-reported colorblind/egalitarian RES practices while growing up, and 25% (2/8) of these participants self-reported explicit promotion of distrust towards racial/ethnic minorities
(i.e., white supremacist views) while growing up. Of the eight total participants in this group, there were an equal number of white and nonwhite (black or Asian) participants in this group (4 white, 2 black, and 2 Asian participants).
A slightly lower percentage of participants (35.3%, 6/17) ended up in the “Cultural Coper” category (for which the narrative content was associated with preparation for bias and
133 cultural socialization RES practices) at the end of playthrough 1. Both race and RES experiences seemed to be linked to in-game behavior resulting in this final category. The majority of these participants self-reported RES experiences centered on alertness to discrimination (83.3%, 5/6) combined with either cultural socialization (80%, 4/5) or promotion of distrust (20%, 1/5). This subgroup consisted of 3 black participants, 1 Asian participant, and 1 white participant. The one Asian and one white participant in this subgroup represent all of the non-black participants placed in the “Cultural Coper” subgroup, as the majority of participants who were placed in this category were black
(66.7%, 4/6).
Finally, only 17.6% (3/17) of participants ended up in the “Distrusting Coper” category
(for which the narrative content was associated with alertness to discrimination and promotion of distrust RES practices) at the end of playthrough 1. Only one of these players self-reported promotion of distrust RES messages (in combination with messages of alertness to discrimination, preparation for bias, cultural socialization) while growing up.
In contrast to the above results of playthrough 1, by the end of playthrough 2, 85.7%
(12/14) all participants ended up in either the “Cultural Coper” or “Distrusting Coper” categories, with an even distribution (50%, 6/12) of participants in each category. There was significant variation of self-reported RES strategies while growing up for the participants who ended up in these categories. Only 14.3% (2/14) participants were placed in the “Colorblind” category by the narrative engine by the end of playthrough 2, and
134 both of these participants were also placed in the “Colorblind” category during playthrough
1. These results demonstrate a very notable shift from the distribution of category outcomes in playthrough 1.
Figure 16: Participants’ final identity categories for playthroughs 1 and 2.
135
Figure 17: Final identity categories by players’ RES for playthrough 1. Abbreviations for RES practices are used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination,
PB = preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy, PD =
promotion of distrust).
136
Figure 18: Final identity categories by players’ RES for playthrough 2. Abbreviations for RES practices are used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination,
PB = preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy, PD =
promotion of distrust).
4.2.2.7 Perceptions of Evidence of Racial Discrimination
This section summarizes how players’ RES experiences impacted their interpretations of the narrative, in terms of perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination during the encounter, and the overall themes of the narrative. Figures 19 and 20 summarize players’ perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination with breakdown by RES. The majority of players (52.9%, 9/17) stated that there was conclusive evidence that the narrative featured a discriminatory racial encounter. 55.6% (5/9) of these players self-reported alertness to
137 discrimination RES practices (in addition to one or more other strategies) while growing up.
All but one of the eight participants who interpreted there was either ambivalent evidence
(87.5%, 7/8) or no evidence (12.5%, 1/8) that this was a discriminatory racial encounter self-reported colorblind/egalitarian RES practices while growing up. The remaining one participant (who stated there was ambivalent evidence that this was a discriminatory racial encounter), who was an Asian female, self-reported alertness to discrimination and cultural socialization while growing up.
The only participant in the entire study who reported there being no evidence that this was a discriminatory racial encounter self-reported colorblindness/egalitarianism RES messages while growing up, had the highest CoBRAS unawareness of blatant racial issues score (27) and second highest unawareness of racial privilege score (16) of all participants in the study. This participant was a Generation X black female who grew up in East
Africa.
138
Figure 19: Perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination.
139 Figure 20: Perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination by players’ RES. Abbreviations for
RES practices are used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination, PB = preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy,
PD = promotion of distrust).
4.2.2.8 Players’ Narrative Analyses
Players’ thematic analyses of the narrative were clustered into four major groups, which are summarized in Figures 21 and 22 with breakdown by RES. The first two groups both centered their analyses on issues of dealing with scenarios in which you are assumed incompetent and have your abilities doubted, with the first subgroup explicitly mentioning the impact of race or gender identity on these assumptions (35.3%, 6/17 participants), and the second subgroup not explicitly mentioning race or gender identity (17.6%, 3/17 participants). The third group centered their analyses on raising awareness of manifestations of racial discrimination and promoting empathy towards the racialized experiences of people of color (41.2%, 7/17 participants). The fourth group emerged from a single narrative interpretation which centered on investigating the history and truth underlying the narrative content, such as considering that the player character may have had in fact cheated or held negative attitudes due to prior encounters with the NPC
(5.9%, 1/17 participants).
66.7% (4/6) players who provided a thematic analysis of assumed incompetence without explicitly mentioning race or gender identity self-reported colorblind/egalitarian RES
140 while growing up. All but one of the six participants who self-reported alertness to discrimination RES while growing up provided a thematic analysis of either assumed incompetence including explicit mention of race or gender (33.3%, 2/6) or building empathy for the racialized experiences of people of color (50%, 3/6). Finally, it is important to note that the single participant who interpreted the narrative to be themed around the investigation of truth was also the only participant who did not perceive the narrative to contain evidence of racial discrimination.
Figure 21: Players’ thematic narrative analyses.
141
Figure 22: Players’ thematic narrative analyses by RES. Abbreviations for RES practices are
used (CB = colorblindness, E = egalitarianism, AD = alertness to discrimination, PB =
preparation for bias, CS = cultural socialization, WS = white supremacy, PD = promotion of
distrust).
4.2.2.9 Players’ Interpretations of Body Language
The body language options presented in the narrative appeared to have a noteworthy influence on players’ overall perceptions and interpretations of the encounter based on the results of the qualitative interview data as well as the GEQ measure of player behavioral involvement. Regardless of demographics, RES while growing up, or in-game behavior, all participants reported a central challenge of the narrative was to interpret the meaning of
142 each body language option within the social context, considering how the NPC would perceive and react to it.
The majority of players explicitly mentioned feeling that the NPC’s actions depended on their choices of body language, that they were able to identify adequate choices of body language to reflect a range of approaches to respond to the teacher, and that body language was an effective interaction mechanism for the narrative. One participant stated that “the body language was a good way of presenting the options. They were all very representative, or at least the ones I picked seemed to represent the action that I thought they did. I was able to represent how I would act with those options in that scenario.”
Another participant stated, “I think the body language helped me communicate better.
Again, it was my approach at the beginning to say alright let’s try to go into this nice.
But then I realized that she, to effectively communicate with her I needed to have stronger gestures and body language to communicate with her and to have that matched what I wanted to express in words. So I realized going through that game that by choosing a gesture that would affect the words that Tiffany would say and that seemed to be more effective.”
A couple of players expressed limitations of body language as a game mechanic for driving the narrative forward. One participant expressed struggling with not having a wider range of options for expressing their feelings. She described the body language options as “a little confusing, but it’s like, I can kinda see all of them. It’s kind of like you’re choosing between not taking a stance and taking the stance. And that just in general with anything like
143 that is just really hard for me ‘cause I don’t wanna be like the person that’s like the angry whatever black person. It was just really hard for me.” Another player noted the limitations of using body language selection as a mechanism for practicing real-world communication, due to his experience of body language being more reactive and subconscious than controlled and based on conscious decisions. He said that “in this [game] context, you're consciously choosing to gesture. You're just your body language, you're choosing to basically communicate a body language, then passively react. Body language is to me at least a very reactive … In real life, I would have been less in control how I would have reacted; that's something I know about me.”
Another group of players stated that they often felt misunderstood by the NPC due to a kind of double bind resulting from a desire to make their internal thoughts, feelings, and motivations known as the player-character, conflicting with a desire to obtain a favorable response filtered by the NPC’s external perceptions of them. One player described this experience of mediating choices in the game between both your internal emotional state and others’ external perceptions of you as “almost like playing a game of poker.” Players expressed that they felt that “no matter what the body language was, [Mrs. Serilda] always perceives it as I was lying for sure” and that the NPC “only understood the extremes of it, so when [Tiffany] was more upset, it was taken as aggression. And then when [Tiffany] was nicer, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, no, you're still [cheating].’”
A couple of the participants who described feeling misunderstood by the NPC based on their choices of body language discussed this issue in the context of race, gender, and
144 culture. One participant stated they believed “[Tiffany’s] race distorted the view of what that body language meant … I think that same body language from another student would not have evoked the same response from Mrs. Serilda.” A second, who was a black female, described having had similar experiences with people misunderstanding and overreacting to her emotions in the past: “I chose the body language that I thought meant that she would passionately defend herself. Mrs. Serilda called it aggressive, and I was like, ‘I've been called this before. I know what you mean when you say this.’ I think that she meant that she wasn't ready or prepared to handle a black person, or especially a black woman's emotions.”
Finally, a third participant, who is originally from Southeast Asia, shared a concrete example of a body language option that possessed two different meanings across cultural contexts, and using facial expressions to determine the underlying meaning. Regarding the body language option with the player character folding her arms across her chest, he explained that “folding the hands is actually, in [player’s country of origin], it’s a [sign of] respect … when the teacher came into the class, you have to fold the arms.” He stated that while working in a different Southeast Asian country, however, he was reprimanded for being disrespectful to a manager at work by folding his arms in this way, so this experience taught him that this body language could have different meanings in different cultural contexts. He explained that while playing the game, he read the facial expression of the player character to determine the meaning of this body language option: “In the game, she has like angry face, so I knew that she was not giving respect.”
145
The quantitative and qualitative results presented in this chapter demonstrate that
Passage Home VR provided an engaging interactive VR narrative experience through the use of a computational model of RES and body language driven game mechanics. This videogame system provided a compelling approach to addressing the topic of racial discrimination for players from a wide array of racial and ethnic identity backgrounds.
The next chapter presents an analysis and discussion of the trends observed in the dataset, its implications for the design of racial and ethnic identity representations in videogame systems, and concludes with future work based on the insights gleaned from this exploratory study.
146 Chapter 5
Conclusion
A substantial amount data was collected and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the efficacy of a computational model of RES and body language driven game mechanics in Passage Home VR. This chapter discusses the key findings and insights gleaned through a thorough analysis of the user study results.
5.1 Findings and Discussion
This thesis has presented research evaluating the efficacy of an embedded computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) within software prototype of Passage Home
VR, an interactive VR narrative themed around coping with racial discrimination. The research pursued here sought to investigate how players’ racial and ethnic socialization
(RES) influences how they experience emotion, perceive characters, themes, and events in interactive VR narratives, and the efficacy of employing a computational model of RES and body language as a game mechanic for facilitating compelling storytelling and embodied identity representations. Towards beginning to answer these research questions, this section presents the notable trends and insights resulting from a grounded theory qualitative analysis of over six hours of transcribed interview data. This analysis serves to demonstrate the feasibility of using Passage Home VR to support social scientific
147 research, namely for therapeutic roleplaying in the EMBRace intervention, and highlight the implications of players’ RES on their subjective experiences in videogames.
5.1.1 Players’ Overall Game Experience
Given the wide variation in players’ backgrounds, strategies, and interpretations of the narrative content and themes, using body language as a game mechanic for driving the narrative appeared to provide another dimension of immersion, identity projection, and meaning which strengthened the overall narrative experience. In summary, the results of this study suggested that a computational model informed by RES theory and body language as a game mechanic were very effective for compelling interactive narrative storytelling and player reflection. Players not only reported high levels of immersion, flow, and behavioral involvement in the GEQ results, but also described a wide range of narrative content interpretations and thematic analyses rooted in critical self-reflection of their beliefs and experiences.
In terms of body language as an interaction mechanism, the majority of players interpreted the options of body language correctly as they were mapped to the 3 identity categories by system design. This was a significant finding, given that there exist a wide array of culturally specific meanings of body language, and players represented a diverse array of identity and RES backgrounds. Although one participant explicitly noted differences in cross-cultural meanings of folded arms in one of the body language options, he was
148 ultimately correct in corresponding this choice to the intended meaning of the system design.
Furthermore, the majority of players expressed that they felt the body language provided a meaningful interaction mechanism for the thematic focus of the game. This was demonstrated by interview responses which included participants’ interpretations of how the racial identity of the player-character may have impacted how she was perceived by the non-player character. Also, some participants noted the importance of non-verbal communication in high-stakes confrontations in the physical world, such as the one featured in Passage Home VR. Based on the qualitative interview data as well as the
GEQ and SUS results, body language as a game mechanic appeared to support creating an engaging gameplay experience.
5.1.2 Players’ RES and In-Game Behavior and Interpretations
The following section presents an analysis of the results of players’ RES backgrounds, and the relationship between their RES backgrounds on their in-game behavior, perceptions of evidence of racial discrimination, and narrative thematic analyses.
5.1.2.1 Players’ RES Backgrounds
RES literature has found that egalitarianism is the most common strategy for all racial and ethnic groups, cultural socialization and egalitarianism are most likely to be reported,
149 preparation for bias has been found to be more common in black families in the U.S. than any other minority family setting, and promotion of distrust is rarely explicitly self- reported. Black and immigrant families are likely to engage in moderate cultural socialization, pride and legacy reinforcement, although parents of Asian origin, including parents of Japanese and Chinese origin, are among the least likely to report conversations about discrimination or equality among groups [3]. Additionally, research has also found that white parents tend to adopt colorblind/colormute practices which assume that because one should not notice race, one should also avoid the discussion of race entirely
[3, 124, 125, 126].
The study results regarding the distribution of players’ RES experiences are consistent with the literature. The majority of participants self-reported egalitarianism RES practices and the majority of white participants reported colorblind RES practices while growing up. The least-reported RES practice in the study was promotion of distrust (4 participants in the entire study), which is consistent with the finding that this is the least likely of all socialization practices to be self-reported in research.
5.1.2.2 Players’ In-Game Behavior
The results of this study suggest that players’ RES experiences while growing up influenced their in-game behavior. The strongest relationship was observed between players’ self-reported RES experiences while growing up, and their final identity categorization based on their in-game choices during playthrough 1 of the game. The
150 majority of participants stated during their interviews that during playthrough 1, they made choices which reflect what they would do during a real-world encounter, and during playthrough 2, they made choices which were attempting to meet a satisfactory outcome for their player-character, Tiffany (i.e., the NPC believing that she did not plagiarize her essay). Though not every participant followed this approach, the majority of final identity categorizations at the end of playthrough 1 did correspond to the players’ self-reported
RES backgrounds. Furthermore, the majority of users took a more subdued approach in playthrough 1 by choosing body language interpreted as de-escalatory, and in playthrough
2 there was more identity play and exploring how outward expression of negative emotion affected the interaction.
The distribution of the players who ended up the Colorblind category at the end of playthrough 1 by RES backgrounds suggests that players who grew up with messages deemphasizing discussions of race or the existence of institutional discrimination, and emphasizing “not seeing color” and individuality were more likely to make in-game body language choices associated with the “Colorblind” identity category approach, as compared to individuals who experienced RES practices centered on alertness to discrimination, preparation for bias messages, or cultural socialization while growing up, regardless of their race. It is interesting to note there were only 2 players in the entire study who ended up in the “Colorblind” identity category in playthrough 2. Moreover, these 2 players also ended up in the “Colorblind” identity category at the end of playthrough 1 and they both self-reported being socialized using colorblind/egalitarian practices growing up.
151 It was interesting to note that both of these participants grew up outside of the U.S. One participant was Asian and grew up in Southeast Asia, and one participant was black and grew up in West Africa and Northwestern Europe. Upon further analysis of the qualitative interview data with these two participants, both reported receiving messages emphasizing the importance of respecting authority figures while growing up. Although further exploration is required, it appeared that the RES and cultural backgrounds of these two players may have motivated their choices resulting in their placement into the “Colorblind” category during both playthrough 1 and 2.
The sample size individuals socialized with promotion of distrust RES messages is too small to determine the relationship between the in-game behavior and RES centered on this strategy. Only 1 of the 3 participants who ended up in the “Distrusting Coper” category at the end of playthrough 1 self-reported promotion of distrust RES messages while growing up. This participant was a black female who earned the second lowest
CoBRAS score for unawareness of racial privilege (9) of all participants. 2 of the 3 participants who ended up in the “Distrusting Coper” category at the end of playthrough
1 self-reported egalitarian/colorblind RES messages and were white males. Their qualitative interview data suggests that experiences living abroad may have had a strong influence on their present-day awareness of racial microaggressions and institutional discrimination, despite their RES experiences growing up. One grew up in Northern Africa and Western Europe and contrasted political ideologies he was exposed to in each country, and the other studied abroad for several years in Southeast Asia and noted the significance
152 of his experience living in a context where he did not belong to the majority for the first time in his life. It would be interesting to further explore the impact of formative post- adolescent racial identity experiences in combination with RES on in-game behavior.
The majority of players ended up in a different identity category in playthrough 2 than in playthrough 1. In contrast to the results for playthrough 1, the distribution of final identity categories for playthrough 2 did not have as strong of a relationship to players’
RES backgrounds. This trend suggests that while players’ RES seemed to have a significant impact on their behavior in playthrough 1, behavior during playthrough 2 was not necessarily dependent upon RES for the “Cultural Coper” and “Distrusting Coper” categories. The qualitative data suggested playthrough 2 strategies for the majority of these players were typically motivated by a desire to seek out a more favorable outcome and/or employ more assertive or confrontational strategies (by selecting body language less associated with placating the non-player character) given the observations of discriminatory racial behavior during the first narrative experience.
5.1.2.3 Players’ Narrative Analyses
One might assume that participants who self-identified with the race and/or gender of the player-character, Tiffany, who is a black female, would be more likely to interpret this encounter as racially biased in nature, but this was contradictory to the results. The relationship between age and place of origin with a non-racialized interpretation of the narrative must be further explored, but the only participant in the entire study who
153 perceived no evidence of racial discrimination was a black female and grew up with colorblind RES messages. This was also the only participant to report the “investigation of truth” thematic analysis. It would be fascinating to further explore what other unique narrative interpretations would emerge from a larger sample of participants who end up not perceiving evidence of racial discrimination in the narrative, given that the narrative was intended to demonstrate this identity phenomena. The distribution of narrative thematic analyses by players’ RES backgrounds suggests that individuals whose RES growing up included messages to increase awareness of discrimination were more likely to explicitly discuss matters of race in their thematic analyses.
These overall results suggest there is a notable connection between RES (rather than just a player’s race or gender) and interpretations of racial discrimination within the narrative as well as thematic analyses that should be further explored.
5.2 Future Work and Acknowledgements
The previous section provided an analysis of the Passage Home VR user study results, which confirm the hypothesis that players’ RES has a meaningful relationship to how players behave and interpret interactive narratives focused on issues of racial discrimination. Additionally, the analysis suggests that body language was an effective game mechanic for simulating identity phenomena to support compelling virtual storytelling. This final section of this thesis summarizes the additional research questions
154 which will be investigated in future work, concluding reflections, and acknowledgements to individuals who contributed to the design and development of the software prototype.
5.2.1 Future Work
The results of this preliminary study have provided initial observations and trends relating players’ RES with in-game behavior and narrative interpretations. It will be critical to gather data from a larger and more diverse group of participants to explore potential statistical inferences between differences observed across different groups and these outcomes in future studies. A specific focus of this research is to better understand how black adolescents between the ages of 10-14 (across all RES experiences) navigate this virtual encounter following the EMBRace intervention. Before deployment into this context, it may be necessary to test the system with participants who self-identity as black and/or are under the age of 18 in order to better understand how these preliminary results may relate to the results yielded through studying a more targeted population.
In terms of other factors potentially contributing to participants’ in-game behavior and narrative interpretations, it would be interesting to explore the potential impacts of growing up outside of the U.S. upon players’ in-game behavior and narrative interpretations, particularly their interpretations of body language, given that this characteristic appeared to have a significant link to self-reported RES in the results of this study. Data was also collected on participants’ views on how the media portrays race,
155 it was not a major focus within the scope of this thesis. Future studies could explore the association between players’ views on the media portrayal of race and their behavioral and psychological responses to the narrative.
Although participants were informed that all data would be anonymized and that there were no “correct answers” to all questions, it is important to note that the racial and gender identity of the author (black and female), who facilitated all user study interviews, could have contributed to positive impression management by participants. Future studies could consider the use of computer-based survey tools (in addition to or in place of semi- structured interview methods) to reduce this effect.
An additional focus of future work will be to improve the overall narrative content, artwork, and user experience. In future versions of the narrative, it will be interesting to explore a new interaction design which enables players to select different options focused on “reflecting back” to specific “memories” of RES, a more internally-focused approach which will allow the narrative to simulate more accurate and specific thoughts and feelings resulting from RES which are relevant to the encounter. The current prototype also uses low-poly graphics, a basic color palette, and limited feedback throughout the experience.
A major goal of this project is to refine the graphics have more expressive qualities that are reflective of the narrative content, provide players with more dynamic visual and auditory feedback throughout the experience, and couple the text-based narrative interaction with voice narration and/or sound effects to increase players’ immersion and attention during the encounter.
156 Finally, the current prototype of Passage Home VR categorizes players’ RES based on their choices of externally-communicated body language based on broadly recognized human emotions. In future implementations, it would be fascinating to present options which take into account the cultural variation and importance of context in nonverbal communication. It would also be interesting to explore the impact of enabling freeform, player-defined body language as an input mechanism.
5.2.2 Concluding Reflections
The major contribution of this work is the novel application of RES theory to the design of an embodied identity representation and interactive narrative experience. The goals to strengthen both the technology and theory associated with this research are within the broader scope of future work and potential deployment into the EMBRace intervention.
Research on using immersive media in applied psychology contexts is still nascent, and the results of this study suggest a promising opportunity for interactive VR narratives to enable therapeutic roleplaying and empirical data collection which inform how RES relates to coping strategies employed in and reflections following a simulated discriminatory racial encounter. Although much recent research on VR applications addressing social issues has focused on empathy building and the reduction of implicit bias, this research has sought to better understand if VR can be used as a tool for better understanding how players’
RES impacts their resulting in-game strategies for coping with discriminatory racial
157 encounters and their perceptions of racial discrimination within interactive narratives.
The preliminary results of this study suggest that players’ RES, rather than simply their race, gender, or age, has a significant influence on their in-game behavior and narrative interpretations. Results from future studies will lead to a better understanding of how embodied identity representations informed by RES can serve to reach towards the greatest potential of interactive VR narrative for both compelling storytelling and applied psychology research.
5.2.3 Passage Home VR Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to recognize the invaluable guidance and feedback of
Professors D. Fox Harrell and Riana Elyse Anderson to the design and implementation and evaluation of Passage Home VR. Next, I would like to acknowledge John Jennings,
Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Cooperating Faculty Member in the
Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside for the inspiration and expertise he provided during the early brainstorming process for the visual and design elements of Passage Home VR. Finally, I would like to thank the following students for their meaningful insights and contributions to this research as part of
Professor Fox Harrell’s CMS.628/828 Advanced Identity Representation course at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Pablo Jose Ortiz-Lampier, Aziria Rodríguez Arce,
James Bowie Wilson, Jacob Higgins, and Jasmine Roberts.
158 Appendix
Appendix I: Chapter 1
Table 1:
The following notes provide additional historical information on the specific racial and ethnic classification labels used in the U.S. census from 1970 – 2010.
[1] The category “Chinese” was only used in the state of California in the 1860 census questionnaire.
[2] The introduction of the “Hindu” category was the first time a religious term was used as a category in a U.S. decennial census.
[3] Prior to 1930, Mexicans were categorized as “White” on the U.S. Census. Following
1930, Mexican-Americans successfully lobbied to remove “Mexican” as a category on the
U.S. Census. It reappeared in 1970 under the Hispanic origin category, and in 1980 was separated into three categories: “Mexican,” “Mexican-Am.,” and “Chicano.”
[4] In the 1950 census questionnaire, the term “Indian” was changed to “American Indian” to differentiate from individuals with origins in India and the “Hindu” and “Korean” categories were dropped as categories. The “Korean” category was reintroduced in the
1970 census questionnaire.
[5,6] Alaska and Hawaii earned statehood in 1959, so the categories “Native Alaskan” and
“Pacific Islander” were introduced to the 1960 census questionnaire. “Aleut” and “Eskimo”
159 were only used as separate categories in the state of Alaska, and “Hawaiian” and “Part
Hawaiian” were only used as separate categories in the state of Hawaii in the 1960.
[7] “American Indian” was changed to “Indian (Amer.) in 1970 due to many individuals mistakenly choosing the “American Indian” category because they self-identified as
“American.”
[8] “Black” was reintroduced under the “Negro” category, which many attribute to increased ethnic pride during the Civil Rights Movement.
[9] The 1977 Office of Management and Budget Directive 15 policy distinguished race
(i.e., “White,” “Black,” “American Indian or Alaskan Native,” or “Asian or Pacific Islander”) from ethnicity (i.e., “Hispanic” and “Not Hispanic”). As a result, anyone identifying with the ethnic category of “Spanish/Hispanic Origin or Descent” could self-identify under any race category.
[10] Under the “Other Spanish/Hispanic” category in 1990, a write-in line instructed individuals to “print one group” with examples including “Argentinian,” “Colombian,”
“Dominican,” “Nicaraguan,” “Salvadorian,” “Spaniard,” etc.
[11] Under the “Other Asian or Pacific Islander” category in 1990, a write-in line was introduced with examples including “Hmong,” “Fijian,” “Laotian,” “Thai,” “Tongan,”
“Pakistani,” and “Cambodian.”
[12] The 2000 census was the first time the term “Latino” was used.
160 [13] The 2000 census questionnaire marked the first time that individuals were permitted to self-identify with more than one race. In 2005, the Omnibus Appropriations Bill introduced the required inclusion of the “Some Other Race” category on the census.
[14] Additional examples were also added to the “Other Asian” and “Other Pacific Islander” categories.
[15] Instructions were added to the 2010 census to inform individuals to distinguish
Hispanic origin as a separate concept from race.
[16] In 2010, the wording of the race question was updated to “What is this person's race?
Mark x one or more boxes.”
Appendix II: Chapter 4
Table 21:
The following qualitative data provides additional example excerpts which demonstrate the emergent themes of the semi-structured interviews.
Theme Theme description Additional interview excerpts
Questions on RES and racial identity experiences: Silence About Lack of explicit “I think where I come from, [we had] a kind of Race discussion about race, a community or a country that believes in kids prejudice, or having kids' stuff to listen to and then waiting discrimination; until they grow.” messages focused on reinforcement of Participant Race and Gender: black female abstract, ethical RBPS Scores: Reactive=21, Proactive=24 CoBRAS Scores: RP=27, ID=17, BRI=16
161 ideals of treating “[My parents] sheltered me a lot from others equally. [discussing race and discrimination] … So, in Related to that sense, they never really warned me or even egalitarianism and exposed me to any issues. It was always just colorblindness RES focused on get an education and live your life practices. like anyone else. I was fortunate enough that all the schools that I went to had a very big, diverse background. I remember going in the school bus and most of the people inside of that school bus ... were from the various African countries. Ivory Coast, Gabon, all that, like everyone was from everywhere. It was, to me, the thing that stuck out was, ‘Wow, there's a bus taking me to school.’ Not the, ‘Wow, there's all sorts of people around me.’ That was sort of like ... almost natural so I grew up in that sort of setting of just melt yourself without really thinking about it.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=14, Proactive=18 CoBRAS Scores: RP=18, ID=16, BRI=12 Expressions of Covert and overt “So I asked someone to prom [in high school], White messages of white and then my parents found out that the kid Supremacy racial superiority in was black and then didn't let me go with him, comparison to racial and it sucked a lot. A lot of drama went down. and ethnic minority That was bad. For my mom, she's usually more groups. Related to subtle, but in that situation, it was very direct promotion of distrust … My dad is like too direct [overt], like really RES practices, but bad.” specifically focused on maintaining social Participant Race and Gender: white female distance from racial RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=19 and ethnic minorities. CoBRAS Scores: RP=29, ID=18, BRI=11
162 Caution Covert and overt “I remember, like in fifth grade, that was when Towards White messages cautioning the I think the Columbia disaster for the space People individuals’ shuttle. And there was one black guy who was interactions with on that shuttle, and I just remember like my white people to buffer fifth grade classmates was like, ‘They never let against black people live.’ So that's what I grew up discrimination. around … Growing up we were always told to Related to promotion not necessarily trust in black people, because of distrust RES we did have layers where I was growing up. practices, but But to definitely, you know ... that there’s specifically focused on probably more trust in them than with other maintaining social demographics.” distance from white people. Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=28 CoBRAS Scores: RP=9, ID=10, BRI=8 Anticipation of Messages emphasizing “The older I got, the more my mom would tell Bias wariness towards me about experiences she had working in structural systems of corporate America here. She was like, ‘I am the oppression and the best person at my level based on blind inevitability of recommendation, but I will never progress discriminatory racial further than the level I'm at because there are encounters, without no brown people above me and there's no necessarily providing women above me. That's where I'm at.’ Her preparation for coping closest friend at work was ... she had one friend with them. Related to who's from Eritrea and one friend who's from alertness to Kenya. The other two people left ‘cause they discrimination RES were like, ‘We're never gonna make it past [this practices. level].’ I think high school, she started saying stuff ‘cause she started getting frustrated. I could see it when she came back from work.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7
163 “My parents were … open about race. I don't remember any specific moment where it was like now we're going to talk about race. It's kind of just been something that comes up … If something on the news came on about police brutality or something, then we'd start talking about like, ‘We live in a racist country and you should be aware there are very racist people here. People who will judge you based solely on the color of your skin, and judge you as inferior specifically.’”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=25, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=11, BRI=6 Individual Messages reinforcing “[My parents told me] to always be who you Identity the value of diversity, are. Growing up, I didn't have any Black Affirmation cultural pride, friends until I was a teenager. Growing up, my history, and legacy parents always ... they always taught me to and emphasizing high understand, to not be militant, but be assertive self-esteem within a in how you felt.” multicultural society. Related to cultural Participant Race and Gender: black female socialization RES RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=26 practices. CoBRAS Scores: RP=22, ID=19, BRI=12 Identity Experiences and “Growing up in a pretty homogenous Negotiation messages highlighting community, we didn't talk a lot about race in the tension of particular, but we in general, didn't talk about negotiating one’s a lot of things. Most of the time it was religious individual racial kind of keep your head down, work hard and identity with racial you'll succeed in life. In some ways, that's a group membership, good message, but without a kind of, as I and between parents’ mentioned, moving into different parts of the RES practices and world can be a little more shocking without pressures felt from any sort of exposure growing up. As I've gotten participant’s older, that sort of sheltering probably community or the prompted me to sort of lash out a little bit media. Often more over time, as I continued to learn and associated with expose myself to different ideas and cultures participants and things like that.” highlighting shortfalls of egalitarianism and Participant Race and Gender: white male colorblindness RES RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=10, ID=9, BRI=6
164 practices upon “The issue of racism, that is something I used reaching adulthood. to see in the movies. I knew that was a major issue in the United States, maybe in England, and maybe Germany. But it's not something I grew up experiencing that being say black was something bad or something different. It something I came to experience when I moved to the U.S. That [transition] was strange ‘cause people used to bring out things you never thought that you are different in that way. They really didn't look at what you bring to the table, they didn't feel the value that you had or the contribution you made. But all they saw was the color and the accent … To me, some of the questions they used to ask were kind of shocking. Someone asking you whether were you come from, you put on shoes, you put on clothes, whether you go to school. Even when you explain to them that I have a bachelor’s, I did a postgraduate. But the fact that you're black, you have a different accent, you are a different person.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=21, Proactive=24 CoBRAS Scores: RP=27, ID=17, BRI=16 “I got better at recognizing what happens when you're not the assumed majority when I was living in Singapore [as a white person]. I think that helped the most, because there were things that would happen that would be kind of, like, now I understand what people are talking about. Because people are assuming things about Western people in Singapore that are I know aren't true, and they just don't want to listen … It's weird, because ... that's what made me so sure that you do need rich exposure to diversity your whole life or you're just gonna slip.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=15 CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=19, BRI=8
165 Dismantling Messages emphasizing “I do have an aunt who is part of [the Racism personal and community of people who helped to raise me]. institutional efforts to She was very, like for instance, Pro [historically stand up against black colleges and universities]. Like pro this, white supremacy and pro that [regarding efforts to support black structural forms of people] because she just saw so many things oppression. Related to happening, especially in the media.” cultural socialization RES practices. Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=28 CoBRAS Scores: RP=9, ID=10, BRI=8 “I think the message around God and race was like, ‘God didn't make you inferior, like you are a whole human being that is as worthy as any other human being, and because of that you shouldn't accept racism as norm that like, you should just go with it. You should speak out against it, do what you can to combat racism.’”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=25, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=11, BRI=6 Questions on media portrayal of race: Lack of Middle Perspectives “I would say [how race and discrimination are Ground emphasizing the portrayed in the media] depends on what part media’s failure to of the internet that I'm on. Parts of the capture a sensible internet say that there is and parts of the middle ground internet say that there isn't. I'm aware of bias between extreme in media. I would say that on most news viewpoints towards websites that I go to, it'll talk about things like racism: one side which white privilege and it'll talk about other overemphasizes race, frameworks that are there … I think that most and one side which media that I see talks about it in an unpacking refuses to [the knapsack] kind of way. Then, there's some acknowledge racism. other websites that are more conservative- leaning.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=18, ID=25, BRI=14
166 “I think that the media takes a different role depending on where the media is … Looking back as an adult, I'm glad that I got to see both sides of those stories because they sort of reinforced a wall between two different groups or identities ... Going back to Algeria to visit, when you actually reminded of that like that sort of almost culture shock within your own culture. But on the other side, if you talk about how people see Arabs in America, especially the media, it's not how an Arab sees themselves and how Arabs see Americans and vice versa. It is a different way of not understanding a different type of ignorance that have the same results.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=14, Proactive=18 CoBRAS Scores: RP=18, ID=16, BRI=12 “When I look at, say, social media, all the not so confident people are on social media ... They call it the race card is thrown out there, but I feel like these are people who have not experienced it and those people who choose not to think that it exists. I feel like they need to be educated more about what actually is going on around them. But then also when I get to, say, television and radio, I feel like sometimes they give too much information that it ends up educating the wrongdoers to do more on top of what they have. Say, for example, sometimes they pick on minor things the way someone's dressed. A vivid example is a white girl having cornrows. That's cornrows what should you involve race in it? … I feel like sometimes things are blown out of proportion. They end up educating the wrong people, the wrong groups of people.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=21, Proactive=24 CoBRAS Scores: RP=27, ID=17, BRI=16
167 Focus on Race Perspectives noting “I feel like with women of color, in particular, Paragons representations of that divide the people talk about between racial paragons which either being like a smart, brainy girl who's like either perpetuate librarian style, or a total slut, it's like one or harmful racial the other. You can't just be a normal person stereotypes or feature or someone who likes metal music, or whatever. exceptional, over- None of those things. It's either some kind of achieving people of exotic, somewhat sexualized thing, or you're color, and a lack of like a brainiac, nerd person who works in the ordinary library. I think [this applies to] Asian women, representations. but also just generally women or color.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7 Optimism Perspectives “The media, the newspaper, everything just Towards acknowledging reaffirmed that [there is extreme bias in our Improved current problems with communities] … it's maybe, I don't know, Representation media representation getting a little better now … I think media is of race, but optimistic changing a bit, but certainly not so much. If about shifts towards you compare ads and you still see the white more diversity and happy perfect picturesque family, definitely inclusion. uneven right, in terms of representation in the media.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=12, Proactive=16 CoBRAS Scores: RP=8, ID=8, BRI=6
Questions on players’ gameplay strategies:
168 Real-World Strategies which “I was trying to go like a middle. I tried to be Identity mirror the approaches stand on my ground but not to be seen like Mirroring player would take in rude. Not to seem like begging, like crying. So the physical world I tried first to do like a middle, keep my head based on their social cool, that kind of [approach] ... But it did not identity. work … because I think she has to see how convinced I am that I did not cheat, so I feel that I need to show a bit of like anger emotion so that she will believe in that. I would probably do the same thing in real life. There was like a Asian in me that ingrained in there where you had to always respect to teacher.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian male RBPS Scores: Reactive=18, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=22, BRI=11 “My strategy in the first round was, my mom always told me, ‘kill ‘em with kindness,’ alright I'm gonna pick the smile and go for it. Then when the teacher reacted and was still accusatory and wasn't really listening to what Tiffany was saying, I needed to pick a more defiant gesture in that response. I think that just got me more mad, her response, so I just stayed with the defiant.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=12, Proactive=16 CoBRAS Scores: RP=8, ID=8, BRI=6
169 “I was trying to go like a middle. I tried to be stand on my ground but not to be seen like rude. Not to seem like begging, like crying. So I tried first to do like a middle, keep my head cool, that kind of ... But it did not work. Maybe I should play a little bit harder. I cannot remember the exact reply. Because I think she has to see how convinced I am that I did not cheat, so I feel that I need to show a bit of like anger emotion so that she will believe in that. I would probably do the same thing in real life. There was like a Asian in me that ingrained in there where you had to always respect to teacher.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian male RBPS Scores: Reactive=18, Proactive=21 CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=22, BRI=11 Avoidance of Strategies focused on “I took two paths to the game. I actually Stereotypes the avoidance of played it twice, and the first path, I took was conforming to more of like kind of just passive, almost sad, negative stereotypes type of reaction along with very respectfully about black people. explaining myself. I originally chose that action because I know there are stereotypes around the idea of the ‘angry black woman.’ I wanted to avoid that. I was fairly surprised when I chose that route and I was still labeled as angry and being disrespectful to the teacher.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=10, ID=9, BRI=6 “So the first time around, I chose the body language that I thought represented being passionate. In my head, I was like, ‘She's moving her hands around a lot. She's speaking, so I think that she's going to defend herself and just provide facts and figures about why she knows that she didn't cheat; she worked hard,’ and ‘she’ being Tiffany. I chose the body language that I thought meant that she would passionately defend herself. Mrs. Serilda called it aggressive, and I was like, ‘I've been called this before. I know what you mean when you say this.’ I think that she meant that she
170 wasn't ready or prepared to handle a black person, or especially a black woman's emotions … Often, I think that black students are considered older than they are, they're considered angrier than they are. They're just not given a fair chance to represent themselves … She just made me so angry, and the assumptions that she made about who Tiffany was as a person, about her abilities, and about what her body meant, it was just like, ‘You clearly are not looking at a child. To you, you're looking at some grown woman that's neck-rolling or something like that, popping gum or something. You see something different clearly.’”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=15 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=13, BRI=6 Focus on Play- and outcome- “My strategy was I wanted to hear what she Exploration focused strategies was saying and I was going to react on the and Outcomes attempting different basis of her initial prompts but inside there was choices to discover one character that was, to me, much more interesting or ideal assertive about what was happening to her and possibilities for much more upset. She was like my inner self, narrative outcomes. but my outer self in the similar situation reacted moderately because it's almost like playing a game of poker. You want to see what cards are being dealt and then you want to figure out what's gonna happen. Then you play your game as opposed to that and my game, again I'm trying to play a child in elementary school although I have the lens of a person who has had to tolerate this for several years, so my natural tendency is to mitigate. And as a child, I also didn't want to escalate it for a kid because I'm thinking at myself at that age I don't want that child to go through trauma. I was looking at it like that and I was saying to myself, okay I'm gonna be as calm as possible.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=22, Proactive=26 CoBRAS Scores: RP=14, ID=17, BRI=8
171 “I was afraid of being too angry because in the options given for Tiffany's body language, I thought if I were too angry, then the teacher would get even angrier at me. I felt like the teacher responded as I guess I was relieved that the teacher wasn't as angry, and yeah. The teacher's responses also affected which one I chose, too.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=20 CoBRAS Scores: RP=24, ID=20, BRI=12
Evidence of Discrimination in Narrative: Lack of Narrative “Maybe I missed it … [but] I hadn't, I don't Evidence interpretations which think I mentioned, or Tiffany hadn't did not perceive mentioned anything about color. So it's sort of adequate evidence of like, ‘Oh, we weren't even considering that. We identity-based weren't thinking about it. It was just the discrimination. quality of my essay, or you thought I was cheating and I said I'm not cheating.” 1 1Note: This excerpt focuses on the subject’s interpretation of playthrough 1; subject noted that they perceived ambivalent evidence of racial discrimination in playthrough 2.
Participant Race and Gender: black male RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=12 CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=16, BRI=8 Ambivalent Narrative “Tiffany is one of the few black students in the Evidence interpretations room, and I think if I were the only student of featuring ambivalence my race, I would feel like maybe that would be towards evidence of a part in the teacher treating me differently identity-based from other people.” discrimination. Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=20 CoBRAS Scores: RP=24, ID=20, BRI=12
172 “I don't think gender had anything to do with the interaction. I think there was one point where the teacher said something about ... I think she said something about being articulate? Or something like that, which I think she may not have been aware of how that came across. I would say that some of it had to do with race, but I'm not sure how much.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=14, Proactive=18 CoBRAS Scores: RP=18, ID=16, BRI=12 “Before the race thing got ... it got into anything, I was like, ‘You shouldn't speak to any young person like that.’ Those were my first feelings. She just definitely was like, ‘You didn't write that.’ And that's where she just went. I feel like even no matter race, [what] any young person is, I feel like that's just not the way to influence them. I feel like you take the stance and you're supposed to be an influence. I say this because of my personal experiences of being accused of things like that … One in middle school and one in high school where a White teacher thought that maybe someone else had written my story, and I am a rule follower to my core. I would never look on the internet and write something from someone else. It all got resolved and it was proven and all that other stuff. But I definitely experienced that. To see a game that's kinda geared towards that, it's like ... I was like, ‘What the [expletive]?’ Because I ... sorry. It was extremely disturbing. I was just like, ‘What is going on here?’ That was really hard for me.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=26 CoBRAS Scores: RP=22, ID=19, BRI=12
173 Conclusive Narrative “I think it was very obviously discrimination Evidence interpretations rather than her plagiarizing, because I like the perceiving concrete fact that you could see what she was thinking evidence of identity- too and seeing like, ‘I worked every single based discrimination. weekend.’ So that made you have more empathy for her because she obviously worked really hard ... I think at one point, the teacher said like, ‘Oh, I know someone from your background has trouble with English,’ and that was one of the worst things she says because that's a very large generalization … It was so wrong.”
Participant Race and Gender: white female RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=19 CoBRAS Scores: RP=29, ID=18, BRI=11 “Oh, [Tiffany's identity] definitely [affected her experience]. Especially when she said like, ‘I know you don't know English that well.’ What's that supposed to mean? Like, especially if I'm black American and I grew up here, like I know English, it might not be the same type of ... There might be some ‘Ebonics’ or like African American vernacular English thrown in there, but I definitely know English. So to say that struggle with it, is kind of unnecessary.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=29, Proactive=28 CoBRAS Scores: RP=9, ID=10, BRI=8 Thematic Narrative Analyses: Assumed Thematic analysis “I'd say the central themes are around Incompetence centered on idea of discrimination and how we interact from places with emphasis having your abilities of power and respond based on that assertion on racial doubted by people in of power from the other. To help users, like identity positions of authority myself, understand, come a little closer, to based on assumptions understanding how discrimination affects about your abilities, people and the assumptions that people make and strategies for self- based on how a person looks and y'know skin advocacy. These color and other factors.” interpretations acknowledged the role Participant Race and Gender: white male of racial and gender RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=15
174 identity in having CoBRAS Scores: RP=16, ID=19, BRI=8 one’s abilities doubted. Assumed Thematic analysis “I think one of the big [themes] is that how Incompetence centered on idea of someone is thinking in their internal narrative, without having your abilities that is not what the other person is reading mention of doubted by people in into it, possibly because they don’t wanna read racial identity positions of authority into that. They don't want to see this person based on assumptions as a complex person who tried really hard, who about your abilities, is upset rightfully so, but more just that they and strategies for self- have an attitude and they have an attitude advocacy. These problem, and they were cheating, and interpretations did whatever, and now they got caught. And those not explicitly mention looked to very different ways to someone who the role of racial and was paying attention at all, but to someone gender identity in who has made up their mind already. There is having one’s abilities not that much you can do to change it. It doubted. didn't really matter in this scenario any of the things that I picked.”
Participant Race and Gender: Asian female RBPS Scores: Reactive=17, Proactive=22 CoBRAS Scores: RP=12, ID=16, BRI=7 Building Thematic analysis “I guess [a central theme of the story is about] Empathy centered on idea of how to carry yourself when someone poses a using immersion to situation that could possibly be racial raise awareness of discrimination. I guess for people who haven't how racial experienced this kind of situation before, it tells discrimination them that this situation exists.” manifests in everyday life encounters and Participant Race and Gender: Asian female promote empathy RBPS Scores: Reactive=13, Proactive=20 towards the racialized CoBRAS Scores: RP=24, ID=20, BRI=12 experiences of people “It was pretty clear that no matter what you of color. did, from the perspective of the girl in the story, that you were never going to attain the same level that someone else in her shoes might have. Maybe someone of a different gender or race. That was pretty frustrating to see. I think the hope is that it teaches users a different perspective or that it allows them to experience a new perspective and think a little more critically about how they interact with others and the world and if they may also be using
175 some of these same stereotypes and also biased against others that they don't realize they are.”
Participant Race and Gender: white male RBPS Scores: Reactive=10, Proactive=10 CoBRAS Scores: RP=10, ID=9, BRI=6 “I think that people have a lot to learn from the game, especially like I've had that upbringing but I'm also mixed. So I think that sometimes maybe I look at things with a different lens than a person that would have been the same complete race as Tiffany would have looked at it. For me, again this is my self- identification with being African American or African or other or mixed-race. I'm lighter than Tiffany and I do feel that sometimes in my life I haven't endured the same things as my ‘blacker’ counterparts … I don't like to think like that but if I was completely black I feel like it would've been harder … The fact that she, when I played it again, and she was much more reactive to a different type of body language there are other things that she's also picking up on that are influencing her way that she's seeing me. And I thought that was a huge innovation of the game.”
Participant Race and Gender: black female RBPS Scores: Reactive=22, Proactive=26 CoBRAS Scores: RP=14, ID=17, BRI=8
Investigation of Thematic analysis Truth centered on digging deeper than the No additional players reported this surface level to interpretation outside of the player already investigate and quoted in Chapter 4, Table 29. discover the history or truth behind an accusation.
176 Bibliography
Chapter 1
1. G.L. Berry and J.K. Asamen, Television, Children, and Multicultural Awareness: Comprehending the Medium in a Complex Multimedia Society, Handbook of Children and the Media, eds. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer. London: Sage, 2001.
2. D.F. Harrell and C. Lim. “Reimagining the avatar dream: modeling social identity in digital media,” Communications of the ACM. (60)7, pp. 50-61, 2017. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/7/218864-reimagining-the-avatar- dream/abstract
3. D. Hughes, J. Rodriguez, E.P. Smith, D.J. Johnson, H.C. Stevenson, and P. Spicer. “Parents’ Ethnic–Racial Socialization Practices: A Review of Research and Directions for Future Study,” Developmental Psychology, 42(5), pp. 747-70, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.5.747
4. J. McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Reprint ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2011.
5. D. Williams, N. Martins, M. Consalvo, and J.D. Ivory. “The virtual census: representations of gender, race and age in video games,” New Media Society, 11(5), pp. 815-834, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809105354
6. A. Gourdin. “Game developer demographics: An exploration of workforce diversity,” International Game Developers Association, Mt. Royal, New Jersey, 2005.
7. A. Everett and C. Watkins. “The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games,” in The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, Katie Salen, ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 141–166, 2008. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.141.
8. The Nielsen Company (US), LLC., “How diverse are video gamers—and the characters they play?”, Nielson Entertainment, March, 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/how-diverse-are-video- gamers-and-the-characters-they-play.html
177 9. J.N. Bailenson, Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2018.
10. M. Slater M, B. Spanlang, M.V. Sanchez-Vives, and O. Blanke. “First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality,” PLoS ONE, 5(5), e10564, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010564
Chapter 2
11. G. Ladson-Billings. “Just What is Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?”, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), pp. 7-24, 1998. doi:10.1080/095183998236863.
12. G. Garcia-Alexander, H. Woo, and M.J. Carlson. “Race and Ethnicity,” in Social Foundations of Behavior for the Health Sciences, Springer International Publishing AG, ch. 6, pp. 101-116, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64950- 4_6
13. S.E. Cornell, D. Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (Sociology for a New Century Series), 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London: Pine Forge Press, 2007.
14. G.D. Sandefur, M.E. Campbell, and J. Eggerling-Boeck. “Racial and Ethnic Identification, Official Classifications, and Health Disparities,” in Critical perspectives on racial and ethnic differences in health and in late life, N.B. Anderson, R.A. Bulatao, and B. Cohen ed. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25522/
15. W. Brekhus. “A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting Our Focus,” Sociological Theory, 16(1), pp. 34-51, 1998. https://www.jstor.org/stable/202213
16. V. Ware, R. Frankenberg, and M. Segrest. “Review: Rereading Race and Gender: When White Women Matter,” American Quarterly, 48(1), pp. 153-160, 1996. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30041528
17. G.C. Bowker, S.L. Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Inside Technology), revised ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000.
18. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903.
178 19. D. Bell, Race, Racism and American Law, 6th ed. New York: Aspen Publishers, 2008.
20. F.J. Davis, Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition, 10th ed. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2001.
21. I. Haney-López, White by law : the legal construction of race. New York: New York University Press, 1996.
22. D.L. Schafer. “‘A Class of People Neither Freemen nor Slaves’: From Spanish to American Race Relations in Florida, 1821-1861,” Journal of Social History, 26(3), pp. 587-609, 1993. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3788628
23. J. Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation, 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984
24. D.I. Kertzer, D. Arel, and D.P. Hogan, Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses, 1st ed. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
25. N.R. McKenney and C.E. Bennett. “Issues regarding data on race and ethnicity: the Census Bureau experience,” Public Health Rep., 109(1), pp. 16-25, 1994. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1402238/
26. R.A. Hahn, J. Mulinare, S.M. Teutsch. “Inconsistent Coding of Race and Ethnicity in Infants-Reply,” JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, 267(2), pp. 259-63, 1992. doi: 10.1001/jama.267.2.259.
27. B.M. Pratt, L. Hixson, and N.A. Jones, “Measuring Race and Ethnicity Across the Decades: 1790–2010 Mapped to 1997 U.S. Office of Management and Budget Classification Standards,” Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Sep. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.census.gov/data- tools/demo/race/MREAD_1790_2010.html
28. U.S. Census Bureau, “The Two or More Races Population: 2010,” U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, Sep. 2012. [Online]. Available: https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-13.pdf
29. D.F. Harrell, C. Lim, S. Sidhu, J. Zhang, A. Gursoy, C. Yu. “Exploring Everyday Creative Responses to Social Discrimination with the Mimesis System,” in Proc. International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2012), Dublin,
179 Ireland, May 30-June 1, 2012, pp. 223.
30. D.W. Sue, C.M. Capodilupo, G.C. Torino, J.M. Bucceri, A.M.B. Holder, K.L. Nadal, and M. Esquilin. American Psychologist, 62(4), pp. 271–286, 2007. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271.
31. C. M. Steele, and J. Aronson. “Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), pp. 797-811, 1995. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797
32. S. Cheryan and G.V. Bodenhausen. “When positive stereotypes threaten intellectual performance: The psychological hazards of ‘model minority’ status,” Psychological Science, 11(5), pp. 399-402, 2000. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00277.
33. J. Piaget, The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1952. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11494-000
34. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1980.
35. J. E. Marcia. “Identity in adolescence,” Handbook of adolescent psychology, 9(11), pp. 159-187, 1980.
36. J.S. Phinney. “Stages of Ethnic Identity in Minority Group Adolescents,” The Journal of Early Adolescence, 9(1-2), pp. 34-49, 1989. doi: 10.1177/0272431689091004.
37. A.F. Chávez and F. Guido-DiBrito. “Racial and Ethnic Identity and Development,” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 1999(84), pp. 39-47, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.8405
38. S. Ott, The Organizational Culture Perspective. Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1989.
39. C.E. Rodríguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census and the History of Ethnicity (Critical America), 1st ed. New York: NYU Press, 2000.
40. M.P. Root, Racially Mixed People in America, 1st ed. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1992.
41. L. Wright. “One drop of blood,” New Yorker: 70(22), pp. 46-55, July 1994. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/07/25/one-drop-of-blood
180 42. M.J. Anderson, The American Census: A Social History, new ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
43. A. Piper, “Passing for White, Passing for Black (1991),” in Out of Order, Out of Sight, Volume I: Selected Essays in Meta-Art 1968-1992. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.
44. Center for Assessment and Policy Development, MP Associates, and World Trust Educational Services, “Summary of Stages of Racial Identity Development Interaction Institute for Social Change,” Racial Equity Tools, Feb. 2017 [Online]. Available: http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/Compilation_of_Racial_Identity_ Models_7_15_11.pdf
45. W.E. Cross, Jr. “The Negro to Black conversion experience: Toward a psychology of Black liberation,” Black World, 20, pp. 13-27, 1971.
46. W.E. Cross, Jr. “Psychological Nigrescence Revisited: Introduction and Overview,” Journal of multicultural counseling and development, 29(3), pp. 165-173, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1912.2001.tb00515.x
47. W.S.C. Poston. “The Biracial Identity Development Model: A Needed Addition,” Journal of Counseling and Development, (69)2, pp. 152-155, 1990. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1990.tb01477.x
48. K.A. Rockquemore and T. Laszloffy. Raising Biracial Children. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2005.
49. J.E. Helms, A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person or Understanding the White Persons in Your Life. Topeka, KS: Content Communications, 1992.
50. S. O. Utsey, J.G. Ponterotto, A.L. Reynolds, and A.A. Cancelli. “Racial discrimination, coping, life satisfaction, and self-esteem among African Americans,” Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(1), pp. 72-80, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb02562.x
51. M.F. Peters and G. Massey. “Mundane extreme environmental stress in family stress theories: The case of Black families in White America,” Marriage and Family Review, 6(1-2), pp. 193–218, 1983.
181 http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J002v06n01_10
52. B.B. Richardson, “Racism and child-rearing: A study of Black mothers,” Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, 1981.
53. M.B. Spencer. “Children’s cultural values and parental child rearing strategies,” Developmental Review, 3(4), pp. 351–370, 1983. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0273- 2297(83)90020-5
54. B.D. Tatum, Assimilation Blues: Black Families In White Communities, Who Succeeds And Why (Contributions in Afro-american and African Studies), revised ed. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
55. H.C. Stevenson, Jr. “Validation of the Scale of Racial Socialization for African American Adolescents: Steps toward multidimensionality,” Journal of Black Psychology, 20(4), pp. 445-468, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984940204005
56. D. Hughes and L. Chen. “When and what parents tell children about race: An examination of race-related socialization among African American families,” Applied Developmental Science, 1(4), pp. 200-214, 1997. doi: 10.1207/s1532480xads0104_4.
57. J.S. Phinney and V. Chavira. “Parental Ethnic Socialization and Adolescent Coping With Problems Related to Ethnicity,” Journal of Research on Adolescence, 5(1), pp. 31-53, 1995. doi: 10.1207/s15327795jra0501_2.
58. R.S. Lazarus and S. Folkman, Coping and adaptation, in The handbook of behavioral medicine, W.D. Gentry ed. New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1984, pp. 282-325.
59. J. Suls and B. Fletcher. “The relative efficacy of avoidant and nonavoidant coping strategies: A meta-analysis,” Health Psychology, 4(3), pp. 249-288, 1985. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.4.3.249
60. D.L. Tobin, K.A. Holroyd., R.V. Reynolds, and J.K. Wigal. “Hierarchical factor structure of the coping strategies inventory,” Cognitive Therapy and Research, 13(4), pp. 343-361, 1989. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173478
61. R.T. Carter, S. Mazzula, R. Victoria, R. Vazquez, S. Hall, S. Smith, . . . B. Williams. “Initial development of the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale: Assessing the emotional impact of racism,” Psychological Trauma: Theory,
182 Research, Practice, and Policy, 5(1), pp. 1-9, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0025911
62. Z. Waggoner, My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games, 1st ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009.
63. J. Banks and N.D. Bowman. “Close intimate playthings? Understanding player- avatar relationships as a function of attachment, agency, and intimacy,” Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.0, Denver, USA, 2013.
64. D.F Harrell and S. Veeragoudar Harrell. “Imagination, Computation, and Self- Expression: Situated Character and Avatar Mediated Identity,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac, DAC 09: After Media: Embodiment and Context, 17(2), pp. 74-91, 2012. http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/lea/article/view/178
65. D.F. Harrell. “Toward a theory of critical computing: the case of social identity. Representation in digital media applications,” in Code Drift: Essays in Critical Digital Studies, CTheory, 2010. [Online] http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/toward- a-theory-of-critical-computing-the-case-of-social-identity-representation-in-digital- media-applications/
66. G. Fauconnier and M. Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
67. F.J. Varela, E. Thompson, and E. Rosch. The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991.
68. D.M. Olson, E.A. Sutherland, C.H. Zaman, and D.F. Harrell. “Foundations of Interaction in the Virtual Reality Medium,” Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games, pp. 1-7, 2018. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_174-1.
69. F. Herrera, J. Bailenson, E. Weisz, E. Ogle, and J. Zaki. “Building long-term empathy: A large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective- taking,” PLoS ONE, 13(10): e0204494, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204494
70. D. Banakou, P.D. Hanumanthu, and M. Slater. “Virtual Embodiment of White People in a Black Virtual Body Leads to a Sustained Reduction in Their Implicit Racial Bias,” Frontiers in Hum Neuroscience, 10(601), 2016. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00601.
183 71. V. Groom, J.N. Bailenson, and C. Nass. “The influence of racial embodiment on racial bias in immersive virtual environments,” Social Influence, 4(3), pp. 231-248, 2009. doi: 10.1080/15534510802643750.
72. S.J. Ahn, A. Minh Tran Le, and J. Bailenson. “The Effect of Embodied Experiences on Self-Other Merging, Attitude, and Helping Behavior,” Media Psychology, (16)1, pp.7-38, 2013. doi: 10.1080/15213269.2012.755877.
73. S.Y. Oh, J. Bailenson, E. Weisz, J. Zaki. “Virtually old,” Computers in Human Behavior, 60(C), pp. 398-410, 2016. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.007.
74. Virtual Human Interaction Lab, “Empathy at Scale,” Dec. 2015. [Online]. Available: http://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/2015/empathy-at-scale/
75. T. Nath, “Investing in Video Games: This Industry Pulls In More Revenue Than Movies, Music,” June 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.nasdaq.com/article/investing-in-video-games-this-industry-pulls-in- more-revenue-than-movies-music-cm634585
76. C.C. Abt, Serious Games. New York: Viking Press, 1970.
77. U. Ritterfeld, M. Cody, P. Vorderer, Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects, 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2009.
78. C. Milk, “How Virtual Reality Can Create the Ultimate Empathy Machine,” Mar. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_u ltimate_empathy_machine?language=en
79. E.A. Sutherland. “Staged empathy: empathy and visual perception in virtual reality systems,” M.S. thesis, Department of Comparative Media Studies, Mass. Inst. Of Tech., Cambridge, MA, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97998
80. United Nations Virtual Reality, “Syrian Refugee Crisis,” 2015. [Online]. Available: http://unvr.sdgactioncampaign.org/cloudsoversidra/#.XE6nY89Khjs
81. Virtual Human Interaction Lab, “Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://vhil.stanford.edu/becominghomeless/
184 82. MIT Open Documentary Lab, “Hunger in Los Angeles,” 2012. [Online]. Available: https://docubase.mit.edu/project/hunger-in-los-angeles/
83. R. Kennedy, “Meeting ‘the Other’ Face to Face,” The New York Times, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/meeting- the-enemy-face-to-face-through-virtual-reality.html
84. S. Lacey, “Face to face with ‘The enemy’,” 2016. [Online]. Available: http://news.mit.edu/2016/face-face-with-the-enemy-karim-ben-khelifa-1202
85. M. Karam and M.C. Schraefel. “A Taxonomy of Gestures in Human Computer Interactions,” Technical Report ECSTR-IAM05-009, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, 2005. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/261149/
86. W. Freeman, K. Tanaka, J. Ohta, and K. Kyuma. “Computer vision for computer games,” in Proc. 2nd International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG '96), Washington, DC, October 14-16, 1996, pp. 100. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=524467.795987
87. J. Segen and S. Kumar. “Gesture vr: vision-based 3d hand interace for spatial interaction,” in Proc. sixth ACM international conference on Multimedia, Bristol, United Kingdom, September 13-16, 1998, pp. 455–464, 1998. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=290822
88. T. Konrad, D. Demirdjian, and T. Darrell. “Gesture + play: full-body interaction for virtual environments,” CHI ’03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, April 05-10, 2003, pp. 620–621. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/765891.765894
89. A. Paiva, G. Andersson, K. Höök, D. Mourão, M. Costa, and C. Martinho. “Sentoy in fantasya: Designing an affective sympathetic interface to a computer game,” Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 6(5-6), pp. 378–389, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1007/s007790200043
90. M.W. Krueger, T.Gionfriddo, and K. Hinrichsen. “Videoplace an artificial reality,” in Proc. SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, San Francisco, California, April 1985, 16(4), pp. 35–40. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/317456.317463
91. F.A. Barrientos and J.F. Canny. “Cursive:: controlling expressive avatar gesture using pen gesture,” in Proc. 4th international conference on Collaborative virtual
185 environments, Bonn, Germany, Sep. 30-Oct. 02, 2002, pp. 113–119. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/571878.571896
92. D. Thalmann. “The virtual human as a multimodal interface,” in Proc. Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, Palermo, Italy, 2000, pp. 14–20. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/345513.345232
93. P. Maes, T. Darrell, B. Blumberg, and A. Pentland. “The ALIVE system: wireless, full-body interaction with autonomous agents.” Multimedia Syst. 5(2), pp. 105– 112, 1997. https://doi.org/10.1007/s005300050046
94. Lee, C., Ghyme, S., Park, C., and Wohn, K. (1998). “The control of avatar motion using hand gesture,” in Proc. of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology. Taipei, Taiwan, November 2-5, 1998, pp. 59–65. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/293701.293709
95. J.J. LaViola, Jr., D.A. Feliz, D.F. Keefe, and R.C. Zeleznik. “Hands-free multiscale navigation in virtual environments,” in Proc. of the 2001 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics, ACM Press, pp. 9–15, 2001. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/364338.364339
96. T. G. Zimmerman, J. Lanier, C. Blanchard, S. Bryson, and Y. Harvill. “A hand gesture interface device,” in Proc. SIGCHI/GI conference on Human factors in computing systems and graphics interface, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 5-9, 1987, pp. 189–192, 1987. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/29933.275628
97. D.J. Sturman, D. Zeltzer, and S. Pieper. “Hands-on interaction with virtual environments,” in Proc. of the 2nd annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User interface software and technology, Williamsburg, Virginia, pp 19–24, 1989. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/73660.73663
98. P.A.S. Sinclair and K. Martinez. “Salt and pepper: Tangible hypermedia using the artoolkit,” In Poster in: Proc. of the First IEEE International Augmented Reality Toolkit Workshop, ACM Press, 2002. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ad2f/4f2d8fb56de1f5fd117e90b5361c23499694.pdf
99. V. Buchmann, S. Violich, M. Billinghurst, and A. Cockburn. “Fingartips: gesture based direct manipulation in augmented reality,” in Proc. GRAPHITE '04 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, Singapore, June 15-18,
186 2004, pp. 212–221. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/988834.988871
100. S.M. Goza, R.O. Ambrose, M.A. Diftler, and I.M. Spain. “Telepresence control of the nasa/darpa robonaut on a mobility platform,” in Proc. 2004 conference on Human factors in computing systems, Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2004, pp. 623– 629. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985771
101. C. Peirce, The Essential Peirce, Volume 2: Selected Philosophical Writings (1893- 1913), Peirce Edition Project ed.. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.
102. C. Fernández-Vara. “Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling,” in Proc. 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play, 2011. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/Game-Spaces-Speak- Volumes.pdf
103. D.F. Harrell, K.K.N. Chow, and E. Loyer. “A Digital Humanities Approach to the Design of Gesture-Driven Interactive Narratives,” in Proc. Digital Humanities Conference, Lincoln, Nebraska, July 16-19, 2014, pp. 206-210. http://dh2013.unl.edu/abstracts/ab-301.html
Chapter 3
104. R. Anderson, M. McKenny, & H. Stevenson. “EMBRace: Developing a Racial Socialization Intervention to Reduce Racial Stress and Enhance Racial Coping among Black Parents and Adolescents,” Family Process, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12412
105. R.L. Simons, V. Murry, V. McLoyd, K. Lin, C. Cutrona, & R.D. Conger. “Discrimination, crime, ethnic identity, and parenting as correlates of depressive symptoms among African American children: A multilevel analysis,” Development and Psychopathology, 14(2), pp. 371-393, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579402002109
106. Y. L. Cuffee, J. L. Hargraves, and J. Allison. “Exploring the association between reported discrimination and hypertension among African Americans: A systematic review,” Ethnicity & Disease, 22(4), pp. 422-431, 2011. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23140072
187 107. E. Neblett, C. Philip, C. Cogburn, and R. Sellers. “African American adolescents’ discrimination experiences and academic achievement: Racial socialization as a cultural compensatory and protective factor,” Journal of Black Psychology, 32(2), pp. 199-218, 2006. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0095798406287072
108. E.K. Seaton. “Perceived racial discrimination and racial identity profiles among African American adolescents,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 15(2), pp. 137-144, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015506
109. T. Fullerton, Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 2nd ed. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.
110. T. Martinez, “Academia, Love Me Back. Tiffany Martinez,” October 27, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://vivatiffany.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/academia-love- me-back/
111. J. Dressner, & E. Martinez, “The Scars of Stop-and-Frisk,” New York Times, June 12, 2016. [Video File]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001601732/the-scars-of-stop-and- frisk.html
112. V. S. Martin, “Teen accused of stealing 65-cent carton of milk at middle school to stand trial,” The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/middle-schooler-accused-of- stealing-65-cent-carton-of-milk-at-school-to-face-trial/2016/09/29/1b168478-850f- 11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.424ad81cd9fa
113. S. Gonzalez, “Undocumented Teens Say They're Falsely Accused Of Being In A Gang,” NPR, Aug. 17, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/17/544081085/teens-in-u-s-illegally-say-theyre- falsely-accused-of-being-in-a-gang
114. G. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, print ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
115. D. F. Harrell, D. Kao, C. Lim, J. Lipshin, A. Sutherland, J. Makivic, and D. Olson. “Authoring Conversational Narratives in Games with the Chimeria Platform,” in Proc. 9th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2014), 2014. http://www.fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_paper_12.pdf
188
Chapter 4
116. C. B. Fisher, S. A. Wallace, R. E. Fenton. “Discrimination Distress During Adolescence,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 29(6), 2000. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1023/A:1026455906512
117. H. A. Neville, R. L. Lilly, G. Duran, R.M. Lee, and L. Browne. “Construction and initial validation of the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS),” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47(1), pp. 59-70, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022- 0167.47.1.59
118. W.A. IJsselsteijn, Y.A.W. de Kort, K. Poels, “The Game Experience Questionnaire,” Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 2013. [Online]. Available: https://research.tue.nl/files/21666907/Game_Experience_Questionnaire_English. pdf
119. D. Johnson, M.J. Gardner, and R. Perry. “Validation of two game experience scales: The Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) and Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ),” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 118, pp. 38-46, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.05.003
120. B. Klug. “An Overview of the System Usability Scale in Library Website and System Usability Testing,” Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, 1(6), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/weave.12535642.0001.602
121. P. Ekman, Emotion in the Human Face, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
122. B.G. Glaser and A.L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, Co., 1967.
123. D. Silverman, Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction. London: SAGE Publications Inc., 2006.
Chapter 5
124. M.A. Hagerman. “Reproducing and Reworking Colorblind Racial Ideology: Acknowledging Children’s Agency in the White Habitus,” (2)1, pp. 58-71, 2015.
189 https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649215594817
125. E. Pahlke, R.S. Bigler, and M. Suizzo. “Relations Between Colorblind Socialization and Children's Racial Bias: Evidence From European American Mothers and Their Preschool Children,” Child Development, 83(4), pp. 1164-1179, 2012. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23255686
126. K. Pauker, Y. Xu, A. Williams, and A.M. Biddle. “Race Essentialism and Social Contextual Differences in Children's Racial Stereotyping,” Child Development, 87(5), pp. 1409-22, 2016. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5053617/
190