In the shoes of the other: an educational trip to Auschwitz Birkenau increases high-school students’ perspective taking and identification with Jews

Figures & data

Table 1. Qualitative analysis of open-ended question.

Category	Holocaust education Group (N = 42)	Control Group (N = 40)
Feeling of unreality, incomprehensibility, indescribability	41%	13%
Feeling sick, in distress, being disgusted	17%	8%
Hard to take in, feeling nothing, emptiness	29%	0%
Emotional expressions in more general terms (e.g. terrible/awful)	26%	75%
Important to remember what happened	7%	30%

Table 2. Descriptive statistics.

Variable	M (SD) All	Holocaust education group		Control group
		Pre	Post
		M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)
Empathy
Perspective Taking	26.56 (3.77)	26.89 (2.86)	27.66 (3.11)	26.04 (3.95)
Empathic Concern	24.76 (3.71)	25.26 (3.19)	25.37 (3.24)	24.47 (3.91)
Social identity
Identification with Jews	12.85 (3.15)	12.11 (2.70)	14.07 (2.92)	12.28 (3.11)
Closeness to Jews	2.88 (.96)	2.44 (.81)	3.44 (.91)	2.62 (.86)
Closeness to Swedes	4.12 (.70)	4.09 (.66)	4.22 (.63)	4.08 (.73)

Table 3. Post-measurement bivariate correlations.

	1	2	3	4	5
1. Perspective Taking	–	.39*	.14	.19*	.19*
2. Empathic concern		–	.29**	.12	.10
3. Identification with Jews (index)			–	.62**	.09
4. Closeness to Jews				–	.09
5. Closeness to Swedes					–

*p < .05; **p < .01.