Elaboration enhances the imagined contact effect

Heroic Memory: Remembering the Details of Others' Heroism in the Aftermath of a Traumatic Public Event Can Foster Our Own Prosocial Response

“…In particular, the degree of sensory detail and vividness of remembered and imagined helping events predicted willingness to help (Gaesser et al, 2015;Gaesser, DiBiase, & Kensinger, in press;Gaesser, Dodds, & Schacter, in press;Gaesser & Schacter, 2014). These findings are consistent with previous research related to imagination inflation (Garry & Polaschek, 2000;Hyman & Pentland, 1996;Husnu & Crisp, 2010;Mazzoni & Memon, 2003, see also D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2012 and related work showing that directly manipulating vividness can enhance the perceived probability of imagined events occurring in the future (Szpunar & Schacter, 2013). As the remembered or imagined helping episode is more vividly experienced, the helping event becomes more accessible (Anderson, 1983;Koehler, 1991;Tversky & Kahneman, 1973), providing 'evidentiary value' (Kappes & Morewedge, 2016) that one is willing to help in that situation.…”

“…Although the current manuscript investigated how remembering helping events can be used to facilitate prosocial responses, research on imagination inflation and related effects (Garry & Polaschek, 2000;Hyman & Pentland, 1996;Husnu & Crisp, 2010;Mazzoni & Memon, 2003, see also D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2012 suggests that activated episodes increase perceived likelihood that the event will occur regardless of event type or content. Therefore, how one remembers and represents harming events may under some circumstances actually increase antisocial behavior.…”

Imagined Contact Improves Intentions towards a Hypothetical Peer with Asperger Syndrome but not Attitudes towards Peers with Asperger Syndrome in General

“…Familiarity may also have enhanced the children's ability to elaborate the scenario. Elaboration is a factor that has been found to positively affect imagined contact efficacy (Husnu& Crisp, 2010). In other words, participants might find it easier to imagine engaging in an interaction with an unknown child in a familiar rather than in an unfamiliar environment.…”

“…Mental imagery has been applied in many areas in psychology such as, clinical (Wolpe, 1958), cognitive (Paivio, 1968), and personality (Markus &Nurius, 1986) psychology. A growing body of research has shown that imagined contact improves intergroup attitudes (Turner, Crisp & Lambert, 2007) even among socially segregated groups (Husnu& Crisp, 2010), increases perception of positive traits to the outgroup (Stathi& and facilitates future contact intentions (Husnu& Crisp, 2010) while at the same time it reduces the outgroup homogeneity effect . The method has revealed positive effects even among young children on attitudes towards children from other ethnic-outgroups (Stathi, Cameron, Hartley & Bradford, 2014) and towards peers with disabilities (e.g., Cameron, Rutland, Turner, Holman-Nicolas & Powell, 2011) rendering the method as a promising prejudice reduction-intervention for use in school settings (Stathi et al, 2014).…”

Can Facebook Aid Sustainability? An Investigation of Empathy Expression within the Humans of New York Blog

“…Merely imagining positive interaction with a member of an out-group can elicit the same results as physical interactions [30]. Studies with various outgroups have shown the positive effects of imagined contact including; the elderly [31], gay men [26], Muslims [32][33][34][35], illegal immigrants [36] and people with schizophrenia [37].…”