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Applying imagined contact to improve physiological responses in anticipation of intergroup interactions and the perceived quality of these interactions
Author(s) -
West Keon,
Turner Rhian,
Levita Liat
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12309
Subject(s) - psychology , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , quality (philosophy) , social psychology , skin conductance , developmental psychology , psychiatry , medicine , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , computer science , biomedical engineering
This experiment ( N = 49) is the first to show that imagined contact can buffer anticipatory physiological responses to future interactions, and improve the quality of these interactions. Participants imagined a positive interaction with a person with schizophrenia, or in a control condition, a person who did not have schizophrenia. They then interacted with a confederate whom they believed had schizophrenia. Participants in the imagined contact condition reported more positive attitudes and less avoidance of people with schizophrenia, displayed smaller anticipatory physiological responses, specifically smaller changes in interbeat interval and skin conductance responses, and had a more positive interaction according to the confederate. These findings support applying imagined contact to improve interactions with people with severe mental illnesses.