To culminate my four years studying behavioral science and human-centered design, I decided I wanted to write a thesis paper that would encapsulate as many skills developed during my undergad as possible. I created the Behavioral Science & Design major at Duke in order to study how one might design an experience that could elicit positive behavioral change in a subject. I am fascinated by this question and how it can relate to solving complex societal problems across the world. I was lucky enough to think through this question with Dan Ariely as he designed clever experiments to better understand human behavioral change within more complex issue areas. Much inspired by our work and conversations together, I decided focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for my honors thesis, under Dan’s counsel.
In the study I designed, I sought to understand if watching a video, at various levels of immersivity (virtual reality vs. flat screen), or watching a video at all, could elicit out-group empathy across such a deep religious and cultural rift as the one between Israelis and Palestinians. To tackle this research question, I created the two documentaries (one of the day in the life of a Palestinian boy, and the other of an Israeli boy), designed and organized the psychological study to measure the empathic response in Jerusalem, and ran various analyses of the data. What I found was pretty incredible (and statistically significant).
Please find the thesis paper below.
