The impact of meaningful game narratives on attitudes towards racial outgroups

Abstract

Serious games with interactive narratives have been studied for their potential to influence emotions, behaviors and attitudes concerning real-world people and issues. Past research suggests that the meaningfulness of a narrative is potentially determined by the level of consequence following choices within the narrative. These choices may be the key to improving the effectiveness of an interactive narrative for prosocial outcomes such as improving perceptions towards racial outgroup members. This study examined how consequential and inconsequential choices in meaningful game narratives influence prosocial outcomes towards racial outgroups, as well as the level of meaningfulness perceived by players. Participants in the pre-post experimental study played a newly developed serious game and generally showed improved perceptions towards racial others after gameplay. However, there were no significant differences with regards to prosocial outcomes and perceived meaningfulness of the game narrative between consequential and inconsequential choice conditions of the game.