Psychological Study Experience
Medusa: A Video Game Designed to Affect Empathy and Rape Myth Acceptance Levels
Medusa is a 2-dimensional, pixelated, role playing game with a top down view, that was created with the purpose of raising awareness and active consideration of rape culture. Within this game players are able to take the role of both Perseus and Medusa in an interactive retelling of Medusa’s story. The team combined a specific balance of disciplines and focuses from psychology, philosophy, and game design to have our game successfully raise awareness about rape culture while being sensitive and ethical in both respect to the players and their potential triggers and the sensitivity of the topic and its representation.
Beyond creating Medusa to spread awareness, we also wanted to assess the ability of video games to increase players’ empathy towards victims of sexual assault as well as decrease rape myth acceptance and hostile sexism levels.
Breaking Barriers, Changing Lives: Investigating Mental Health and Well-being Among Victorian Women In Emergency Services
This investigation provides the Emergency Services Foundation (ESF) of Melbourne, Victoria with information on the barriers preventing women in emergency services from seeking mental health support. This project included introductory interviews, a survey, and focused interviews and discussion groups. The main finding of this project was that to improve work culture, the biggest inhibitor of mental health and well-being of women in the emergency services, focus is needed towards bettering mental health literacy and interpersonal intelligence for line managers.
The Effect of Alcohol and Job Type on Women in the Workplace
Research has shown that women who are associated with alcohol are dehumanized and objectified more than men in the same conditions. Our study investigated the dehumanization, sexual availability and professionality of women with and without alcohol who are being hired for either a male dominated position (engineering) or a female dominated position (public relations). Our results show that regardless of job type, women are more likely to be dehumanized, viewed as more sexually available and less professional when associated with alcohol.