Psychology Commons^™

Influencing Opinions About Bats The Impact Of Levels Of Interaction During Educational Presentations, Samantha Hynes

HIM 1990-2015

This experiment was run to see whether the educational presentations done at zoos and other educational facilities are effectively changing patrons' negative misconceptions about the animals they were seeing. Participants were invited to attend one of three educational presentations, where they were exposed to either a low, intermediate or high level of interaction involving a bat. I hypothesized that regardless of the level of interaction, participants would learn the information, but that a higher level of interaction would cause the biggest perceptual change in terms of how participants felt about the bat and the highest degree of learning. Across the …