Selected Articles in Journal and Proceedings, Authored by Members of the Research Training Group (Doctoral Researchers, Postdocs, PIs)

Abendroth, J., & Richter, T. (2026). More than true or false: The effects of prior beliefs on the strategic and nonstrategic processing of belief-relevant socioscientific claims. Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-026-01911-4

Akuffo, O., Claßen, J., & Lugrin, B. (2026). Researching diversity and bias using socially interactive agents: An overview. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 20, 21–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-026-00474-7

Appel, M., Gabel, J., Wimmer, L., Klöppel, M., & Richter, T. (2026). Can fictional stories beat the congeniality bias? Selective exposure to fiction and non-fiction. Human Communication Research, 52(3), 161–175. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqaf027

Appel, M., Malecki, W. P., Messingschlager, T. V., & Winkler, J. R. (2025). I, ChatGPT: Linguistic properties and human experiences of human- versus AI-generated stories. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 1892. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06341-2

Breves, P., & Schramm, H. (2021). Bridging psychological distance: The impact of immersive media on distant and proximal environmental issues. Computers in Human Behavior, 115, Article 106606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106606

Brübach, L., Celikhan, D., Rüffert, L., Westermeier, F., Latoschik, M. E., & Wienrich, C. (2025). When fear overshadows perceived plausibility: The influence of incongruencies on acrophobia in VR. In Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (VR ’25). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR59515.2025.00089

Drexel, A., Rupp, L. & Schramm, H. (2026). “I believe every word the virtual squirrel says about species protection!” The influence of anthropomorphism and topic fit on the credibility of (virtual) greenfluencers. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 115, Article 103236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103236

Fiedler, M. L., Merz, C., Schach, L., Tschanter, J., Botsch, M., Wienrich, C., & Latoschik, M. E. (2026). Am I still me? Visual congruence across reality–virtuality and avatar appearance in shaping self-perception and behavior. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 32(5), 3712–3722. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2026.3679890

Gerigk, Y., Freudenberger, F., Hunze, M. S., Valtin, G., Nieding, G., & Ohler, P. (2025). A digital training program fostering media sign literacy in preschool children: An evaluation study. Media Psychology, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2531418

Green, M. C., & Appel, M. (2024). Narrative transportation: How stories shape how we see ourselves and the world. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 1–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2024.03.002

Hartmann, T., Masur, P. K., & Schramm, H. (2026). Measuring parasocial processing: An easily applicable short version of the parasocial interaction-process scales. Media Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2026.2621710

Hruschka, T. M. J., & Appel, M. (2026). Reducing political polarization through conversations with artificial intelligence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 31(2), Article zmag003. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmag003

Hunze, M. S., Freudenberger, F., Gerigk, Y., Ohler, P., & Nieding, G. (2024). Preschoolers’ knowledge acquisition from German educational media: The impact of a training program fostering media sign literacy. Journal of Children and Media, 19(2), 362–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2024.2418531

Hunze, M. S., Freudenberger, F., Gerigk, Y., Ohler, P., & Nieding, G. (2025). Training of media sign literacy and intelligence: Effects on preschoolers’ cognitive skills. Cognitive Development, 74, Article 101582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101582

Hunze, M. S., Freudenberger, F., Gerigk, Y., Nieding, G., Ohler, P., & Diergarten, A.-K. (2024). Preschoolers’ ability to build inferences about a film protagonist’s emotional state. Cognitive Development, 69, Article 101414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101414

Klöppel, M., Appel, M., & Richter, T. (2026). Narrativity and its effects on reading experiences, empathy, and intergroup attitudes. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000871

Olbermann, Z., Mayer, F., & Schramm, H. (2024). Greenfluencing through the power of emotions? Impact of message frames and emotionally matching background music on the effectiveness of influencers’ environmental communication. Social Media + Society, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241254381

Riedmann, A., Schaper, P., & Lugrin, B. (2025). Reinforcement learning in education: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 35(5), 2669–2723. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-025-00494-6

Steinhaeusser, S. C., Maier, S., & Lugrin, B. (2026). Multimodal robotic storytelling integrating sound effects and background music. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 7, Article 100248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100248

Steinhaeusser, S. C., Zehe, A., Maier, S., Hotho, A., & Lugrin, B. (2026). Development of the fully automatic robotic storyteller—Comparing manual, semi-automatic, and LLM-based emotional story annotation for multimodal robotic storytelling. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 17(3), 2796–2813. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAFFC.2026.3691816

Tschanter, J., Merz, C., Wienrich, C., & Latoschik, M. E. (2025). Towards understanding harassment in social virtual reality: A study design on the impact of avatar self-similarity. In 2025 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (pp. 172–177). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VRW66409.2025.00043

Weiß, M., Krop, P., Treml, L., Neuser, E., Botsch, M., Herrmann, M. J., Latoschik, M. E., & Hein, G. (2025). The buffering of autonomic fear responses is moderated by the characteristics of a virtual character. Computers in Human Behavior, 168, Article 108657. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108657

Wimmer, L., Richter, T., Klöppel, M., & Appel, M. (2026). Investigating the impact of narrativity on the congeniality bias. Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-026-01899-x

Wimmer, L., Wittwer, J., & Hahnel, C. (2026). Introducing a measure of fictionality knowledge. Scientific Study of Literature, 15(1), 177–200. https://doi.org/10.61645/ssol.219

Winkler, J. R., & Appel, M. (2026). Approaching climate change through fiction? The effects of coping dispositions on preferences for climate fiction versus non-fiction. Media Psychology, 29(4), 678–715. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2545334

Winkler, J. R., & Appel, M. (2024). Measuring dynamic emotional experiences in response to media stimuli. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1436918. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1436918

Winkler, J. R., Appel, M., Schmidt, M.-L. C. R., & Richter, T. (2023). The experience of emotional shifts in narrative persuasion. Media Psychology, 26(2), 141–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2022.2103711