About

Nick Joyce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and specializes in intercultural communication and intergroup communication. His research focuses on the communicative and psychological processes underlying intercultural relationships, particularly how intercultural narratives and forms of intergroup communication can be used to foster empathy, change perceptions, and improve attitudes toward other cultures and groups. Additionally, he investigates how specific communication skills and psychological traits or states predict an individual's willingness to engage in positive intercultural communication and narratives. His work employs social scientific methodologies and has been published in various academic journals. His research contributes to understanding media effects on social identity, stereotype change, and intercultural understanding.

Research topics

• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Machine Learning
• Applied psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychiatry
• World Wide Web
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Medicine
• Medical education

Selected publications

• Impacts of Racial and Gender Identities on Individuals’ Intentions to Seek a Counselor

  Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking · 2024 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Developmental psychology

  To understand the theoretical impact of racial and gender identities on counselor selection, an online experiment was conducted with 527 participants in which both the race and gender of a perspective counselor's online profile were manipulated. Results showed that participants had a higher intention to seek counseling when the counselor was from the same racial and/or gender group. These preferences existed above and beyond other identity-based evaluative metrics, such as those tied to group stereotypes (e.g., warmth and competence). The results advocate for the development and evaluation of culturally tailored digital health interventions and underscore the importance of further formative research in this area to enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of healthcare resources for all.

  PublisherDOI

• Intergroup contact and intergroup dialogue: communicative pathways to addressing prejudice and intergroup bias

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-08-15 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Based on scholarship from the social identity and intergroup communication tradition, this chapter synthesizes the literature and research on two related areas of inquiry on how to address prejudice and bias. The first part of the chapter provides an overview on the foundational research and various theoretical and empirical developments related to intergroup contact. The second part of the chapter reviews the landscape of the literature and research on intergroup dialogue. The goal of the chapter is to provide a general overview of these two conceptual domains to address intergroup bias while also serving as a catalyst for further development and applied work.

  PublisherDOI

• When Machine and Bandwagon Heuristics Compete: Understanding Users’ Response to Conflicting AI and Crowdsourced Fact-Checking

  Human Communication Research · 2022 · 41 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Machine Learning

  Abstract Three experiments tested if the machine and bandwagon heuristics moderate beliefs in fact-checked claims under different conditions of human/machine (dis)agreement and of transparency of the fact-checking system. Across experiments, people were more likely to align their belief in the claim when artificial intelligence (AI) and crowdsourcing agents’ fact-checks were congruent rather than incongruent. The heuristics provided further nuance to the processes, especially as a particular agent suggested truth verdicts. That is, people with stronger belief in the machine heuristic were more likely to judge the claim as true when an AI agent’s fact-check suggested the claim was likely true but not false; likewise, people with stronger belief in the bandwagon heuristic were more likely to judge the claim as true when the crowdsource agent fact-checked the claim to be true but not false. Making the system more transparent to users does not appear to change results.

  PublisherDOI

• Investigating College Students’ Intentions to Seek Online Counseling Services

  Communication Studies · 2020 · 15 citations

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Medical education

  The prevalence and severity of mental health issues among students have been increasingly talked about on campuses in recent years. The Internet has rapidly developed to deliver information and facilitate online communication, which creates online counseling to meet the mental health needs of college students. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines college students’ intentions to seek both face-to-face and online counseling. An online survey was conducted with 440 college students. Results suggest that subjective norms, attitudes, and perceived behavioral control predicted participants’ intentions to seek counseling. Although face-to-face counseling was generally seen as most appealing, this effect was moderated by different levels of self-stigma, stigma by close others, and communication competence, such that higher self-stigma, stigma by close others, and lower communication competence made face-to-face counseling less attractive compared to online counseling.

  PublisherDOI

• Titling Practices and Their Implications in Communication Research 1970-2010: Cutesy Cues Carry Citation Consequences

  Communication Research · 2019-11-16 · 22 citations

  article

  In order to better understand the state, evolution, and impact of titling practices in the field of communication, we examine the prevalence of stylistic cues in journal article titles and whether such cues predict subsequent citations. We employed a stratified random sample of articles published in 22 communication journals between 1970 and 2010 ( N = 2,400). Although authors have increasingly used stylistic cues in academic titles, articles with titles containing such cues were cited less frequently. Journal impact modified this relationship: The presence of a stylistic title was associated with more citations if the article was published in a lower impact journal, but fewer citations if it was published in a higher impact journal. Taken together, the results highlight a tension between authors’ attempts to distinguish their work in an increasingly crowded marketplace and readers’ general reluctance to cite scholarship containing stylistic title cues.

  PublisherDOI

• The Sweet Spot

  Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications · 2019-11-26 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract. Young adults were exposed to experimentally manipulated stereotypical, counterstereotypical, or extremely counterstereotypical media depictions of an older adult driving. Perceptions of exemplar typicality and beliefs about older adults’ driving ability were assessed. The results support a curvilinear model in which there is a point, or “sweet spot,” where exemplars are perceived as typical enough of their group to be seen as cognitively related and relevant to perceptions of the group, but still atypical enough to change perceptions and beliefs. We discuss implications of these findings for group-related cognitions, subtyping, and media depictions of older adults.

  PublisherDOI

• Social identity motivations and intergroup media attractiveness

  Group Processes & Intergroup Relations · 2018-03-22 · 14 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this experiment we manipulated three features (intergroup social comparison, outgroup character stereotypicality, intergroup intimacy) of an intergroup TV pilot proposal. We examined how two underlying social identity motivations (social enhancement, social uncertainty reduction) were gratified by the aforementioned features, and whether this gratification predicted media attractiveness. Findings indicate that when social comparison was manipulated to advantage the ingroup, intergroup media gratified existing social enhancement motivations and led to audiences rating the show as more entertaining and attractive. This finding was most clearly evident in the absence of intergroup romance. The gratification of social uncertainty reduction motivations was also shown to increase audience perceptions of intergroup media attractiveness, but outgroup stereotypicality was weakly associated with the gratification of this motivation. These results are discussed in terms of both theoretical implications as well as applications to media campaigns.

  PublisherDOI

• Intergroup Contact Theory

  The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication · 2017-12-13 · 5 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Intergroup contact theory states that when an individual is allowed to communicate with someone who belongs to another group, their prejudices toward this other group will be reduced. This theory has been extensively supported by hundreds of empirical studies using a variety of methodologies and in numerous intergroup contexts. This entry discusses how researchers conceptualize intergroup contact and how this conceptualization has been expanded over time, details support for the basic effects of contact, and discusses variables that change intergroup contact's effectiveness (moderators), as well as variables that may be mechanisms of those effects (mediators).

  PublisherDOI

• Online Contact, Face-to-Face Contact, and Multilingualism: Young Swedish-Speaking Finns Develop Trilingual Identities

  Communication Studies · 2017-12-15 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Based on the tenets of the social context model of second language acquisition, the present article examined the combined effect of online and face-to-face contact in developing multilingual skills and identities among young Swedish-speaking Finns (N = 304). The hypotheses were tested for Finnish as a second language and English as a third language using parallel models. The results were largely identical for both languages. Specifically, online contact enhanced language confidence which, in turn, contributed to language identity. However, online contact had a more substantial effect on confidence as well as identity among those who had little face-to-face contact with speakers of the given language. Findings and their implications are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effects of prototypicality and gender salience on liking and friendship potential of a female interlocutor

  Journal of Social and Personal Relationships · 2017-08-22 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Drawing on self-categorization theory, this article examines the indirect effects of gender salience and prototypicality on friendship potential through increasing liking of a female interlocutor. We manipulated biographies of the fictitious interlocutor to change perceptions of prototypicality. For women, gender salience interacted with prototypicality to directly predict liking and the desire to become friends with the interlocutor indirectly through liking. Specifically, there was an interaction between prototypicality and gender salience, such that as gender salience increased, the prototypical interlocutor was liked significantly more and had higher friendship potential. For men, the same relationships did not appear. We discuss the implications of our study as well as directions for future research on intragroup communication and intergroup contexts with regard to power asymmetry.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jake Harwood

  8 shared

• David B. Baker

  Colorado State University

  4 shared

• László Vincze

  University of Helsinki

  3 shared

• John A. Banas

  University of Oklahoma

  2 shared

• David M. Keating

  University of New Mexico

  2 shared

• Stephen A. Rains

  2 shared

• Nicholas A. Palomares

  Austin College

  2 shared

• Adam S. Richards

  Furman University

  2 shared

Labs

• Center for Political Communication & Civic LeadershipPI

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Arizona