Keep in touch: The effects of imagined touch support on stress and exploration

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 65 (2016) 59–67

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp

Keep in touch: The effects of imagined touch support on stress and exploration Brittany K. Jakubiak ⁎, Brooke C. Feeney Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

H I G H L I G H T S

G R A P H I C A L

A B S T R A C T

• We assigned participants to supportive or control imaginations before stress tasks. • We compared two supportive imaginations: touch and verbal support. • Imagined touch buffered stress and pain during the tasks better than verbal support • Imagined touch support also buffered stress better than control imaginations • Participants who imagined touch expressed the most enthusiasm about the tasks.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 2 April 2015 Revised 29 January 2016 Accepted 4 April 2016 Available online 14 April 2016 Keywords: Close relationships Social support Touch Stress Exploration

a b s t r a c t Although social support buffers stress and helps individuals to embrace challenges (exploration), individuals often experience stressors when close others are not proximally available to provide support. The current research tested whether imagining supportive touch from a romantic partner promotes exploration and buffers stress better than imagining verbal support or control imagination tasks. Participants completed a 5-min imagined support manipulation prior to experiencing a physical stressor, the cold pressor pain task (Exp. 1) or social/performance stressors, the Trier Social Stress task (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants who imagined touch support experienced pain-buffering benefits compared to participants who imagined verbal support, and women who imagined touch support were more likely than women in other conditions to accept the challenge of a more difficult cold pressor task. In Experiment 2, participants who imagined touch support were more buffered from the stress of the socially-evaluative tasks and viewed these tasks with more enthusiasm than participants in all other imagination conditions. Potential mechanisms and implications are discussed. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.K. Jakubiak), [email protected]. edu (B.C. Feeney).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.001 0022-1031/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stressors occur daily: flights are delayed, presentations have “technical difficulties,” car crash, and natural disasters cause disruptions and physical injuries. Close others can help to mitigate the negative effects of stressors and help individuals to embrace challenges by providing social support (e.g., tangible resources, verbal or nonverbal expressions of caring; Cohen, 2004; Feeney, 2004). Social support

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B.K. Jakubiak, B.C. Feeney / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 65 (2016) 59–67

helps individuals to appraise fewer difficulties as threatening and to be less reactive to stressors (e.g., Kane, McCall, Collins, & Blascovich, 2012; Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996). According to social baseline theory (SBT), any difficulty is most threatening when one is alone because individuals are most vulnerable, and therefore most attentive to risk, in this context (e.g., Coan, 2008). When others are proximal, individuals can be less attentive to risks because risks will be distributed among the group and group members can cooperate to overcome obstacles (Coan, 2008). For example, individuals who were asked to climb a hill with a heavy backpack estimated the hill as less steep when they stood with a friend than when they stood alone (Schnall, Harber, Stefanucci, & Proffitt, 2008; Study 1). Relatedly, married women subjected to the possibility of painful shocks displayed attenuated neural threat activation when they held their husband's hand; holding a stranger's hand attenuated the neural threat response to a lesser degree (Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). As these studies demonstrate, stress reactions are situationally-constructed; the social context impacts the level of stress one experiences. This research also demonstrates that specific close others—such as romantic partners—are especially likely to buffer stress. According to attachment theory, the theory from which SBT developed, humans have an innate behavioral attachment system that motivates them to form and maintain a unique bond with a few caregivers, called attachment figures (Bowlby, 1973). In childhood, an individual's primary attachment figure is usually a parent; in adulthood, a romantic partner tends to serve this role (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Attachment figures help to promote safety and exploration (i.e., the enthusiastic pursuit of challenges, growth, learning) throughout the lifespan through their availability and responsive support (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1988). Environmental threats encountered during exploration activate the attachment system and prompt individuals to seek proximity to attachment figures. When an attachment figure is available and responsive, a feeling of security is restored, stress is diminished, and individuals can shift their focus back to exploration (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1988). Through this process, sensitive and responsive partner support helps individuals to experience less stress and to pursue challenges and goals with enthusiasm (Feeney, 2004, 2007; Feeney & Thrush, 2010; Jakubiak & Feeney, 2014). Supportive physical touch (e.g., hand-holding, pats, rubs, and squeezes; Jones & Yarbrough, 1985) may be especially effective to buffer stress and promote exploration, but it has been relatively understudied compared to other enactments of support. Individuals receive and benefit from physical touch from attachment figures throughout the lifespan, from infancy to late adulthood (e.g., Feldman, Singer, & Zagoory, 2010; Heiman et al., 2011). Supportive touches may saliently and viscerally indicate a caregiver's care, acceptance, and availability to buffer stress and promote exploration. Initial studies have demonstrated physiological stress-buffering effects of naturally-occurring physical touch (e.g., hugging, holding hands) in relationships (e.g., Burleson, Trevathan, & Todd, 2007; Ditzen, Hoppman, & Klumb, 2008), and interventions that increased physical touch between romantic partners also reduced stress (Holt-Lunstad, Birmingham, & Light, 2008). In the laboratory, women who received touch support (i.e., a standardized shoulder massage) from their romantic partners prior to a stressful speech task had lower cortisol responses than women who received no support or verbal support from their partners (Ditzen et al., 2007). Taken together, these studies provide preliminary evidence that physical touch has a stress-buffering effect. However, in many stressful situations, support-providers are not proximally available. Many people spend short periods of time away from their significant others when they work, travel, or pursue independent goals; other situations, such as military deployment and long distance relationships, necessitate even greater time apart. In these situations, individuals cannot receive touch support, but they may benefit from recalling and imagining touch support from a partner. Individuals internalize cognitive representations of their attachment figures

through repeated experiences with them (e.g., Baldwin, 1992), so adults are able to rely on their attachment figures for a stress-buffering effect even when those individuals are distant (Smith, Ruiz, & Uchino, 2004). When adults encounter threats, they automatically activate their mental representations of attachment figures to seek symbolic proximity to them (Mikulincer, Gillath, & Shaver, 2002). Symbolic proximity can be powerful, comparable to physical proximity. For instance, individuals who imagined a close other subsequently estimated a hill to be less steep than individuals who imagined a non-close other (Schnall et al., 2008; Study 2). Thinking of an attachment figure also buffers stress better than thinking of an acquaintance, and viewing a picture of one's partner can provide the same pain-buffering effects as actual proximity to him or her (e.g., Master et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2004; McGowan, 2002). Imagining supportive touch experiences may be even more effective to buffer stress and facilitate exploration than thinking of one's partner generally. Responsive partner support buffers stress more effectively than a partner's mere physical presence (Kane et al., 2012), and touch may actively demonstrate responsiveness. Additionally, consistent with previous research (Ditzen et al., 2007), imagining touch support may be more beneficial than imagining verbal support. When individuals receive or imagine verbal support, they may be concerned that they will be evaluated by the support-provider, that the supportprovider's continued acceptance and positive regard is contingent upon success on the task, or that they lack the self-efficacy to respond to the threat alone because the support provider felt the need to offer guidance (Bolger & Amarel, 2007; Bolger, Zuckerman, & Kessler, 2000; Feeney & Thrush, 2010; Taylor et al., 2010; Uchino, 2009). Receiving or imagining touch support may circumvent these costs. Specifically, verbal support may focus on the stressor or the support-recipient's ability to handle the stressor and may implicitly increase pressure to perform to maintain approval, whereas touch support may communicate non-contingent acceptance. Additionally, verbal support may be more likely to be interpreted as support provided in response to vulnerability and thus threaten self-efficacy, whereas touch support may not threaten self-efficacy because it may be construed as an affectionate rather than as a supportive behavior. Indeed, touch within romantic relationships is more commonly interpreted as indicative of love than support (Pisano, Wall, & Foster, 1986). Because touch is a normal expression of intimacy and is interpreted as such, it may circumvent evaluation or self-efficacy concerns, and it may not be interpreted as intrusive. In two experiments, we tested whether imagined touch support buffers stress/pain and promotes exploration (i.e., embracing challenges, expressed enthusiasm for challenges) better than other mental activations of support. Adult participants completed standard laboratory stress tasks—the cold pressor pain task (Exp.1; Lowery, Fillingim, & Wright, 2003) and the Trier Social Stress Test (Exp. 2; Birkett, 2011; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993)—and we tested whether recalling and imagining touch support buffered stress/pain during the tasks and promoted exploration better than imagining verbal support, a partner's physical features (partner control), or a printer (neutral control). 2. Experiment 1: cold pressor 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Participants were 95 (41 male, 54 female) individuals recruited from a private university in Pittsburgh, PA and from the local community (Mage = 21.3, SD = 5.0; 45% Caucasian, 38% Asian, 17% other). Sample size was determined by a power analysis. To be included in the study, volunteers had to be involved in a romantic relationship with the same person for at least the past five months (M = 23.8 months, SD = 23.3 months). Four participants were excluded from analysis

B.K. Jakubiak, B.C. Feeney / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 65 (2016) 59–67

because the water temperature was not in an acceptable range for the cold pressor task, and one participant was excluded for not meeting study criteria (i.e., he or she was not currently in a relationship). Two of the excluded participants were assigned to the imagined touch condition, and one excluded participant was assigned to each of the other three conditions. 2.1.2. Measures and procedure Participants completed the study, one participant at a time, in a one hour-long session. They 1) were given instructions for the cold pressor task, 2) imagined the type of support that they were randomly assigned to imagine, 3) decided whether they wanted to try a more challenging version of the cold pressor task (i.e., exploration), and 4) completed the cold pressor task while reporting their pain at 20 s intervals. The cold pressor task is a widely-used task for inducing physical stress (e.g., Lowery et al., 2003); we required participants to submerge their dominant hand and forearm in ice water (approximately 2°C) for as long as possible, up to three minutes. The ice water was stored in a 9 quart cooler, and the experimenter prepared it by adding three cups of ice to five cups of water. The experimenter added half of the ice approximately 5 min prior to beginning the experiment and added the remaining ice during the experimental session. The experimenter tested the water temperature immediately before the cold pressor task in each session; the water temperature was between 0° and 4.5°C (M = 2.6, SD = 1.0). Participants rated their pain every 20 s during the task (as prompted by the experimenter) on two 11-point (0–10) numerical pain-rating scales. Participants reported verbally both their pain intensity (ranging from no pain to extreme pain) and pain unpleasantness (ranging from not at all unpleasant to extremely unpleasant; Breivik et al., 2008). A total pain score for each time was computed as the average of these two reports (r = .779, p b .0005). During the experimental session, the experimenter (always female) first introduced the cold pressor task and explained the task and pain rating instructions. The experimenter then checked the temperature of the water and told the participant that the water was not cold enough, added ice, and told the participant that they would skip ahead and return to the cold pressor task later. This procedure allowed us to manipulate imagined social support between the instructions for the cold pressor task and the actual task. Participants were randomly assigned to imagine touch support (n = 25), verbal support (n = 26), a partner control (n = 20), or a neutral control (n = 24) by writing for five minutes about an assigned topic. Participants in the touch support condition were instructed to recall and describe ways that their partners touched them physically to make them feel supported; participants assigned to the verbal support condition were instructed to recall and describe things their partners said to them verbally to make them feel supported; participants in the partner control condition wrote about their partner's physical appearance; and participants assigned to the neutral control condition were instructed to describe the physical

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appearance and uses of a printer. The experimenter instructed participants in all conditions to imagine the situation or object vividly while writing, and she remained blind to assigned condition. In a short questionnaire, participants rated their perception of the difficulty of the imagination task from 1(easy) to 7(challenging) and indicated whether or not they wanted to take part in a cold water challenge in which the water would be two degrees colder than normal protocol. This challenge choice provided a measure of exploration (defined as the willingness or desire to embrace challenges or novelty). After the choice was recorded, the experimenter told participants (regardless of their choice) that they would have to skip the cold water challenge and complete the cold pressor task at the typical temperature (which was still very cold). Next, participants completed the cold pressor task and verbally reported their pain every 20 s, as prompted. Finally, participants completed a short demographic measure and were fully debriefed. 2.2. Results 2.2.1. Manipulation check To ensure that participants followed the instructions for their specific support condition and did not spontaneously write information about another condition, two independent coders checked each participant's written response for the presence or absence of touch support, verbal support, and partner descriptions. The coders had perfect agreement in their ratings. Participants in the touch support, verbal support, and partner control conditions wrote about experiences of touch support, experiences of verbal support, or descriptions of their partner, respectively. Participants in the neutral control condition described printers and did not describe their partners or recount support. We also tested whether there were condition differences in the difficulty of the imagination task. There was an overall main effect of condition on perceived difficulty of the imagination task, F(3, 86) = 3.99, p = .010. Post hoc Tukey HSD tests revealed that participants who imagined verbal support (M = 3.56, SD = 1.44) rated the task as more difficult than participants who imagined the neutral control (M = 2.28, SD = 1.14). No other groups were significantly different from one another on perceived task difficulty (imagined touch M = 2.93, SD = 1.54; partner control M = 2.64, SD = 1.07). 2.2.2. Exploration Overall, 29 participants chose to try the cold water challenge (32.6%). Chi-square tests revealed no differences in challenge choice by condition, X2(3) = 1.68, p = .642, but there were differences by gender, X2(1) = 20.82, p b .0005, such that a greater percentage of men (49.5%) chose the cold water challenge than women (13.5%). Due to the gender difference, we tested condition differences in exploration for each gender separately. There were no condition differences for men, X2(3) = 3.64, p = .303, but there were significant differences in exploration for women, X2(3) = 8.14, p = .043 (Fig. 1). Consistent with predictions, a greater percentage of women in the touch support condition (30.0%) chose the cold water challenge than in the verbal support (0.0%), partner control (9.1%) or neutral control conditions (0.0%).1 2.2.3. Pain To assess whether the social support manipulations resulted in different pain experiences during the cold pressor task, we analyzed condition differences in pain reported during the interval between 40 s and 100 s of the task, which included 4 verbal pain reports. This time

Fig. 1. Percentage of participants accepting the cold water challenge (exploration) as a function of imagined support condition and gender.

1 Due to the small expected frequencies in the Chi-Square tests reported separately for each gender, both Chi-Square tests also were computed using resampling with permutation Chi-Square tests. This technique is more appropriate in cases with expected frequencies less than five (Higgins, 2004). In each case, the permutation Chi-Square agreed with the traditional Chi-Square result. Permutation Chi-square tests revealed there were significant differences in challenge choice by condition for females, X2(3) = 8.14, p = .028 but not for males, X2(3) = 3.64, p = .378.

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Fig. 2. Mean pain during the cold pressor task as a function of measurement occasion and support condition.

interval was chosen for two reasons: (1) previous research has suggested that this interval is where effects of social support first emerge (Brown, Sheffield, Leary, & Robinson, 2003); and (2) this is the period of peak pain intensity, before “pins and needles pain” and numbness sets in (David & Pope, 2002; Wolf & Hardy, 1941). Fifteen participants elected to remove their hands from the water prior to this time period and were not included in the analysis. There were nearly equivalent dropout rates across support conditions, and there was no condition difference in the average time that participants kept their hands immersed in the cold water, F(3, 86) = 1.85, p = .145. Preliminary analyses revealed a main effect of challenge choice, F (1,72) = 9.35, p = .003 (such that people who accepted the challenge reported less pain), and no main effect of gender, F(1,73) = 0.09, p = .762, on pain. Therefore, we controlled for challenge choice in subsequent analyses by including it as a covariate. There was a significant main effect of condition on pain, F(3, 69) = 3.33, p = .024, η2p = 0.13 (Fig. 2). Planned contrasts confirmed the hypothesis that participants in the touch support condition (M = 5.99, SD = 2.31) would report less pain than participants in the verbal support condition (M = 7.77, SD = 1.51), F(1, 69) = 6.68, p = .004 (contrast estimate 95% CI = .532–2.762). The other planned contrasts did not indicate a significant difference in pain reports between the touch support condition and either the partner control condition (M = 6.48, SD = 1.68), F(1, 69) = 0.79, p = .377 or neutral control condition (M = 6.13, SD = 1.95), F (1, 69) = 0.41, p = .525, although the means were in the predicted direction. Post hoc Tukey HSD tests revealed that pain reported by participants in the verbal support condition did not differ from either the partner control condition, p = .141, or the neutral control condition, p = .142, and the control conditions also did not differ, p N .999. To further examine group differences in pain, we also used a multilevel growth curve model to test differences in pain slopes between support conditions (Willett & Singer, 2003). The growth curve models estimated initial levels of pain and change trajectory over the first 4 pain reports (REML estimation; AR1 repeated covariance structure). We compared several models using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) to compare model fit and determined that the following twolevel model was best. Level 1 : Painij ¼ π0i þ π1i Timeij þ Time2 ij þ εij : Level 2 : π0i ¼ ϒ 00 þ ϒ 01 Verbal þ ϒ 02 Partner þ ϒ 03 Neutral þϒ 04 Choice þ ζ 0i : π1i ¼ ϒ 10 þ ϒ 11 Verbal þ ϒ 12 Partner þ ϒ 13 Neutral þϒ 14 Choice þ ζ 1i :

In the within person (Level 1) model, we estimated pain as a function of the initial status of pain, time since starting the cold pressor task, time2 (to account for the quadratic shape of the data), and a residual term (εij). In the between person (Level 2) model, we estimated two sub-models to estimate interindividual differences in initial status of pain and rate of change over time. Each sub-model included overall population averages and dummy-coded indicator variables to represent manipulation condition (compared to imagined touch as baseline) and challenge choice. Therefore, initial pain status was estimated as a function of overall intercept (ϒ00), verbal support (ϒ01), partner control (ϒ02), neutral control (ϒ03), challenge choice (ϒ04), and an error term (ζ0i). Change in pain over time was estimated as a function of overall average rate of change over time (ϒ10), verbal support (ϒ11), partner control (ϒ12), neutral control (ϒ13), challenge choice (ϒ14), and an error term (ζii). The model provided support for the inclusion of time and time2 level-1 effects, and did not provide evidence for a group difference in initial pain status (Table 1). As predicted, the model supported group differences in pain slope; the omnibus test for the time by condition interaction was significant, F(3, 217.08) = 4.44, p = .005. Specifically, the estimated rate of pain increase over time was significantly higher for individuals in the verbal support condition compared to those in the touch support condition, ϒ11 = 0.46, 95% CI [0.09, 0.83], p = .016. The estimated rate of change in pain over time for individuals in the partner control condition and neutral control condition were not significantly different from the touch support condition, ϒ12 = 0.13, p = .497, ϒ13 = −0.21, p = .250. To test whether the pain slope for the imagined verbal support condition differed from the control conditions, we used a modified model where imagined verbal support was coded as the baseline with dummy-codes to represent touch support, partner control, and neutral control (see Supplementary materials). The estimated rate of change in pain over time for individuals in the verbal support condition was not significantly different from the partner control but was significantly higher than the neutral control condition, p = .102, p b .0005, respectively (Supplementary Table 1). 2.2.4. Alternative explanation We investigated and ruled out a possible alternative explanation for the pain differences between participants who imagined touch support and verbal support. Because touch occurs commonly outside of support contexts in romantic relationships (e.g., cuddling while watching television), perhaps participants who imagined a touch experience that made them feel supported were more likely to recall a positive experience whereas participants who imagined verbal support that made them feel supported were more likely to recall an experience in which they were feeling stress. In this case, recalling stress could be confounded with condition. To assess this possibility, we coded the written responses that participants in the imagined touch and imagined verbal

Table 1 Results of a multilevel model to predict increases in pain as a function of time, imagined support condition, and challenge choice. Predictor

Estimate

SE

t(df)

p

ϒ00 Intercept ϒ10 Time ϒ20 Time2 ϒ01 Verbal v. Touch ϒ02 Partner control v. Touch ϒ03 Neutral control v. Touch ϒ04 Challenge choice ϒ11Verbal v. Touch × Time ϒ12 Partner control v. Touch × Time ϒ13 Neutral control v. Touch × Time ϒ14 Challenge choice × Time

3.274 2.099 −0.252 −0.128 −0.080 0.742 0.201 0.458 0.131 −0.212 −0.484

0.595 0.258 0.045 0.743 0.777 0.747 0.570 0.189 0.193 0.184 0.143

5.50 (160) 8.12 (185) −5.64 (171) −0.17 (137) −0.10 (136) 0.99 (135) 0.35(136) 2.43 (216) 0.68 (218) −1.15 (219) −3.39 (218)

.000⁎⁎ .000⁎⁎ .000⁎⁎ .864 .918 .322 .725 .016⁎ .497 .250 .001⁎⁎

⁎ p b .05. ⁎⁎ p b .01.

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support conditions produced during the imagination task. One coder independently coded whether the participant made any mention of being stressed (e.g., overwhelmed, anxious, upset) in their writing, and another coder independently re-coded approximately one-third of the responses. The coders had perfect agreement in their ratings. Participants were equally likely to recall a stressful experience when they imagined touch support (56.5%) and verbal support (56.0%), X2(1) = 0.001, p = .971. Thus, differential recollection of stress experiences is not a viable alternative explanation for the differences observed between the touch and verbal support conditions. 2.3. Discussion Experiment 1 provided initial evidence that imagined touch support benefits individuals when they experience a stressful task alone. Imagined touch support affected women's—but not men's—willingness to explore. Women who recalled and imagined a romantic partner providing touch support were most willing to explore, which we operationalized as opting for a more difficult cold pressor task. Attachment figures (e.g., parents, romantic partners) facilitate exploration by demonstrating their availability and willingness to offer responsive support and by instilling feelings of safety and security through expressions of their love and acceptance (Feeney & Thrush, 2010; Noom, Dekovic, & Meeus, 1999). In an imagined context, supportive touch may have best represented availability and acceptance (without incurring costs) to promote exploration in women. Overall, men were more likely to accept the cold water challenge than women, and there were no exploration differences by support condition for men. In other research using the cold pressor task, men chose to endure the task longer when the experimenter was female rather than male (Kállai, Barke, & Voss, 2004); men in our study may have been motivated to impress the female experimenter and may have made their choice based on that motivation. Regarding the potential pain-buffering effects of touch support, the results of this study were promising but inconclusive. Participants who imagined touch support from a romantic partner experienced pain-buffering benefits (i.e., less pain and less of an increase in pain during the cold pressor task) compared to participants who imagined verbal support. This comparison suggests that imagined touch support may, on average, alleviate the potential costs of support receipt more effectively than imagined verbal support (Bolger & Amarel, 2007; Feeney & Thrush, 2010; Taylor et al., 2010). Although imagined touch support produced lower pain ratings than imagined verbal support, participants who imagined touch support did not report significantly less pain than participants in the partner control or neutral control conditions (despite means in expected directions). Given the overall pattern of results, it is possible that the comparison between imagined touch support and verbal support is due to verbal support incurring costs rather than touch support providing benefits. Alternatively, greater power may be needed to detect the treatment effect of touch support compared to conditions that involve imagining partner presence and specific objects. Imagined touch support did facilitate exploration better than the control conditions, which suggests that imagined touch support is more effectual than the control conditions for one important outcome. 3. Experiment 2: evaluative stress task In Experiment 2, we conducted another laboratory stress study to test our hypotheses with a different type of stress task, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). The TSST involves social evaluation during two performance tasks—a speech task and a serial subtraction (counting) task —which reliably produce stress responses (e.g., Birkett, 2011; Creswell et al., 2005). Whereas the cold pressor task is a passive stressor that requires persistence but leaves little room for active engagement, the TSST is a more active stressor, and participants must follow instructions to perform well on the tasks. Because participants have greater control over their experience during the tasks, we expected that we would

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observe the effects of imagined touch support most strongly with these types of stressors. We made the same predictions as in Experiment 1; we predicted that imagined touch support would be more effective to buffer stress and promote exploration compared to all other conditions. In this study, we assessed a different aspect of exploration—enthusiasm for embracing a challenging task—to expand our measure of exploration and to avoid the possible effect of impression management that may have occurred in Experiment 1. The failure to find an effect of support condition on exploration for male participants in the first experiment may have been due to male participants' acceptance of the challenge task to impress the female experimenter. In the current experiment, we assessed enthusiasm for the performance tasks after the tasks had been completed and with no expectation that the experimenter would see the responses. Expressed enthusiasm for challenging activities has been assessed as an indicator of exploration behavior in prior research (Feeney & Thrush, 2010). 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants Participants were 139 (45 male, 93 female) individuals recruited from a private university in Pittsburgh, PA and from the local community (Mage = 21.3, SD = 5.0; 43% Caucasian, 42% Asian, 15% other). We were better able to estimate power based on Experiment 1, and we increased our sample size accordingly. To be included in the study, volunteers had to be involved in a romantic relationship with the same person for at least the past three months (M = 20.4 months, SD = 19.7 months). Thirteen participants were excluded from data analyses for the following reasons: Four participants chose to skip the performance tasks, one participant did not complete the study due to unrelated illness, five participants correctly guessed the purpose of the study, one participant did not follow directions, one participant's stress data was not recorded due to experimenter error, and one participant in the partner control condition spontaneously imagined and wrote about touch support. Of the excluded participants, five were assigned to the partner control condition, two were assigned to the imagined verbal support condition, and three were assigned to each of the imagined touch support and neutral control conditions. 3.1.2. Measures and procedure Participants completed the one hour-long experimental session alone. First, the experimenter (always female) introduced the performance tasks generally; participants were informed that they would complete a speech task and a counting task and that both would be evaluated by a trained evaluator during the study and later by a panel of trained evaluators who would watch the videotaped tasks. The experimenter also explained that participants would rate their stress during the tasks and demonstrated the tone that would serve as a prompt to rate their stress. Next, participants were randomly assigned to imagine touch support (n = 35), verbal support (n = 35), the partner control (n = 34), or the neutral control (n = 35) by writing for five minutes about their assigned topic. Participants rated the difficulty of the imagination task in the same way as Experiment 1. Again, the procedure allowed for the manipulation of imagined social support to occur between the instructions for the evaluative tasks and the actual tasks; however, at this time, participants did not have specific task instructions (i.e., the speech topic) so that they would not begin to mentally prepare for the task during the support manipulation. After the support manipulation, the experimenter provided specific instructions for the speech task and left participants alone for three minutes to prepare without making notes. Participants were instructed to imagine that they were given the opportunity to introduce themselves to the selection committee for their dream job. They were asked to deliver a speech in which they

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described their qualifications for the position, their strengths, and their weaknesses. After the preparation period, a trained evaluator entered. The evaluator was always female, and she always wore a white lab coat and carried a clipboard. The evaluator maintained a serious and stoic, but not hostile, demeanor toward participants. She maintained a stony face and made direct eye contact, kept a neutral tone of voice, and refrained from verbal or nonverbal affirmations during both performance tasks. When the evaluator entered, participants immediately began their five-minute speech. Participants rated their stress during the speech task by circling one number on an 11-point (0–10) numerical stressrating scale, which ranged from not at all stressed to extremely stressed. Participants made stress ratings at 30s intervals, when they were prompted by a tone, for a total of ten stress ratings (α = .98). After the speech task, participants completed a short questionnaire about their perceptions of the speech task to assess their enthusiasm for the task. Participants completed 7-point bipolar scales to describe their feelings about the task (i.e., not fun-fun, not enjoyable-enjoyable, boringinteresting, not frustrating-frustrating), and the item assessing frustration was reverse scored (α = .72). Next, the trained evaluator explained the instructions for the serial subtraction task. Participants were instructed to count backwards from 2083 to zero in 17-step sequences (i.e., to serially subtract 17 from 2083). The evaluator instructed participants to calculate as quickly and correctly as possible. When participants made mistakes, the evaluator told them they were incorrect and asked them to begin again at 2083. The evaluator had a list of correct responses, and she measured performance on this task by recording how far down the list participants were able to correctly subtract. For example, a performance score of 10 would indicate that the participant correctly completed 10 serial subtractions during the 5-min task. Participants rated their stress during this task (α = .99) and their enthusiasm about the task (α = .73) in the same way as for the speech task. Finally, participants completed a short demographic questionnaire and were fully debriefed by the experimenter. 3.2. Results 3.2.1. Manipulation check Two independent coders checked each participant's written responses to the social support manipulation task to ensure that participants followed the instructions for their assigned condition. The coders had perfect agreement in their ratings. All but one participant followed the instructions and did not spontaneously include details pertinent to another condition; one participant wrote about touch support in the partner control condition and was excluded from the analyses. There were no condition differences in the perceived difficulty of the imagination task, F(3, 131) = 1.51, p = .217. 3.2.2. Preliminary analyses We computed a total stress score reflecting stress during both performance tasks by calculating the average of all 20 stress ratings during the speech and serial subtraction tasks (α = .98). Similarly, we computed a total enthusiasm score across the performance tasks (α = .76) as an index of exploration. These composite scores were the outcome variables used in data analyses. Because we observed gender differences in Experiment 1, we tested for gender differences on our outcomes variables. Male and female participants did not differ in the stress that they reported during the performance tasks, F(1, 124) = 0.13, p = .724. However, male participants (M = 3.76, SD = 0.88) reported marginally greater enthusiasm about the performance tasks than female participants, (M = 3.40, SD = 1.08), F(1, 124) = 3.46, p = .065. Given the marginal gender effects, we tested models with and without gender included as a predictor of enthusiasm.

Additionally, we assessed whether there were condition differences in performance on the serial subtraction task. The support conditions did not differ in their performance on the task, F(3, 121) = 1.39, p = .250, but there was a great deal of variability in performance (M = 17.1, SD = 11.9). Participant performance ranged from 0 (i.e., the participant did not make any correct subtractions) to 85 (i.e., the participant correctly completed 85 serial subtractions down to 638). This variability in performance may have impacted stress during the serial subtraction task, so we included it as a covariate in the stress model.

3.2.3. Stress We used an ANCOVA to analyze imagined support condition differences in stress during the performance tasks, controlling for objective performance on the serial subtraction task. Performance constituted a significant covariate, F(1, 120) = 9.58, p = .002, η2p = 0.07. As predicted, there was a significant main effect of condition on stress, F(3, 120) = 4.051, p = .009, η2p = 0.09 (Fig. 3, Panel A). Consistent with Experiment 1, planned contrasts revealed that participants in the touch support condition (M = 4.80, SD = 2.19) reported less stress than participants in the verbal support condition (M = 5.91, SD = 1.91), F(1, 120) = 4.33, p = .039, (95% CI = 0.049–1.946). Additionally, participants in the touch support condition reported less stress than participants in the partner control condition (M = 6.38, SD = 1.50), F (1, 120) = 11.95, p = .001, (95% CI = 0.731–2.692) and marginally less stress than participants in the neutral control group (M = 5.62, SD = 2.20), F(1, 120) = 3.68, p = .057, (95% CI = − 0.030–1.881). Post hoc Sidak-adjusted pairwise comparison tests revealed that stress reports did not differ between the verbal support and the partner control, p = .622, or neutral control, p N .999, or between the two control conditions, p = .507.

3.2.4. Exploration A one-way ANOVA was conducted to examine condition differences in enthusiasm for the performance tasks, as an indicator of exploration. There was a significant main effect of condition on enthusiasm, F(3, 122) = 3.06, p = .031, η2p = 0.09 (Fig. 3, Panel B). Planned contrasts confirmed the hypothesis that participants who imagined touch support (M = 3.97, SD = 1.15) would express greater enthusiasm than participants who imagined verbal support (M = 3.32, SD = 0.09), F(1, 22) = 6.82, p = .010, (95% CI = −1.144 to −0.157) or the neutral control (M = 3.32, SD = 0.94), F(1, 22) = 6.89, p = .010, (95% CI = −1.153 to −0.159). The final planned contrast revealed that participants in the touch support condition reported marginally greater enthusiasm than participants assigned to the partner control condition (M = 3.47, SD = 1.00), F(1, 22) = 3.791, p = .054, (95% CI = −1.011–0.008). Inclusion of gender as a predictor in the model did not impact the nature or significance of condition differences.

Fig. 3. Participant reactions to the performance tasks as a function of support condition. Mean stress during the tasks is shown in Panel A, and mean enthusiasm about the tasks is shown in Panel B.

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3.2.5. Alternative explanation As in Experiment 1, we tested and ruled out the possibility that participants who imagined verbal support that made them feel supported were more likely to recall a stressful experience than participants who imagined touch support. Again, one coder coded written responses for mentions of being stressed, and another coder coded approximately one-third of the responses with perfect agreement. Participants were no more likely to recall a stressful experience when imagining verbal support (60.6%) than touch support (56.3%), X2(1) = .13, p = .722. 3.3. Discussion Experiment 2 provided additional evidence that imagined touch support is effective to buffer stress and to facilitate exploration compared to imagined verbal support and other mental activations. Consistent with the previous experiment, participants who imagined touch support reported less stress during the performance tasks than participants who imagined verbal support. Additionally, in the current experiment, touch support also buffered stress more effectively than the partner control and marginally better than the neutral control. Taken together, these contrasts provide evidence that imagined touch buffers stress, and they do not support the alternative interpretation that imagined verbal support heightens stress and pain. Imagining receiving touch from a romantic partner may allow individuals to regulate their stress response because they remember that a close other is accepting and available, and the symbolic proximity to the responsive caregiver restores felt security (Bowlby, 1973). The results for exploration also replicated and extended Experiment 1. Participants who imagined touch support prior to the TSST expressed the greatest enthusiasm about the evaluative tasks. Using enthusiasm as an index of exploration in this experiment, both genders reported greater exploration after imagining touch support compared to the other support manipulations. This finding suggests that imagined touch support may provide the security that is essential for exploration in both genders (Bowlby, 1973). 4. General discussion In two experiments, we tested whether individuals benefit from imagining supportive touch from a romantic partner when they face stressors alone, without close others accessible to provide support. Touch conveys availability and responsiveness, and it may circumvent potential costs of other forms of support receipt (e.g., stress-enhancing evaluation and self-efficacy concerns) because touch is a normal expression of intimacy in close relationships and redirects attention from the stressor to care for the touch-recipient (e.g., Bolger & Amarel, 2007; Jones & Yarbrough, 1985). For these reasons, we predicted that imagined touch support from a romantic partner would attenuate stress and pain responses and enable exploration better than other mental activations of support. Our findings offer the first experimental evidence for the benefits of imagined touch support. Specifically, participants who imagined touch support reported less pain and less of an increase in pain during the cold pressor task than participants who imagined verbal support. Participants who imagined touch support also reported less stress during the evaluative performance tasks than participants who imagined any other mental support activation. These results extend previous research on touch (e.g., Ditzen et al., 2007; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2008) by demonstrating that touch buffers stress even when it is imagined rather than experienced physically. Across the two experiments, we also found evidence that imagined touch support facilitated two aspects of exploration: the choice to accept a challenge, and the experience of enthusiasm about a challenging task (e.g., Feeney & Thrush, 2010). Individuals are motivated to explore when they feel safe and unthreatened (Bowlby, 1973); therefore, the results suggest that individuals who imagined touch support from their

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partners felt secure enough to approach the challenges with confidence and enthusiasm. This interpretation is supported by research showing that receiving affectionate touch from a romantic partner promotes feelings of security (Jakubiak & Feeney, in press); imagining affectionate touch may similarly promote (i.e., prime) security to promote exploration and buffer stress. Indeed, the manipulations we used in the current study, including the imagined touch support manipulation, were similar to manipulations that are used to prime security in other research. Security priming is often achieved by having individuals bring to mind a close other or think about a time when a close other was supportive (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Security priming has been shown to have diverse and powerful effects including reducing materialism, promoting positive relational expectations, encouraging empathy, and enhancing mental health (e.g., Carnelley & Rowe, 2007; Clark et al., 2011; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Especially relevant to the current investigation, security priming also has been shown to attenuate pain and to generate energy, which could foster exploration (Luke, Sedikides, & Carnelley, 2012; Rowe et al., 2012). Our imagined touch manipulation was more specific than typical security primes as participants were asked to recall and imagine a specific type of supportive experience. Because imagined touch support buffered stress and promoted exploration more strongly than our other conditions that also may have primed security (i.e., imagined verbal support, partner control), we argue that imagining touch may either have an added benefit beyond priming security or may prime security most effectively. The relative benefit of imagining touch compared to imagining verbal support across both studies is particularly interesting. Although some enactments of imagined verbal support would likely be effective (i.e., verbal support that is sensitive, responsive, and non-threatening), our results suggest that, on average, imagining touch support may be more impactful to buffer stress and promote exploration than imagining verbal support. This contrast on all outcomes is especially noteworthy considering that participants in both conditions were instructed to imagine touch or verbal support that made them feel supported. In previous research, touch support buffered stress better than verbal support from a partner (Ditzen et al., 2007), but that may have been because the touch was easier to deliver sensitively, and recipients of verbal support may not have perceived it as supportive. In the current studies, we found that verbal support was not as effective as touch support in promoting exploration or in buffering stress even when all participants imagined instances that they perceived as supportive. Although this contrast is novel and interesting, the reason that imagining verbal support was not as effective as imagining touch remains unclear. Imagined touch support may prime security or convey care, acceptance, and availability more strongly than verbal support. Feeling cared for and valued is an important requirement for emotional support to be effective (e.g., Maisel & Gable, 2009; Selcuk & Ong, 2013), and it may also help to engender enthusiasm for embracing challenging tasks. When individuals feel secure, they may appraise difficulties as challenges to pursue rather than threats to avoid; this could lead to less stress and greater enthusiasm for exploration (Alter, Aronson, Darley, Rodriguez, & Ruble, 2010). Alternatively, touch may circumvent potential costs associated with support receipt (i.e., self-efficacy threats, evaluation concerns) better than verbal support (Bolger & Amarel, 2007; Taylor et al., 2010). Finally, imagining tactile stimulation could be a more intense sensory experience than imagining verbal support and may therefore activate physiological pathways (e.g., oxytocinergic or endogenous opioid systems) that buffer stress and facilitate exploration more strongly (DeVries, Glasper, & Detillion, 2003; Ditzen et al., 2008). Additional research is needed to explore these mechanistic possibilities. Results were largely consistent across the two studies. However, in Experiment 2, but not Experiment 1, imagined touch support buffered stress better than imagining a partner's physical features or a neutral object. This discrepancy may be due to greater power to detect these

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contrasts in Experiment 2. Sample size for both experiments was based on a power analysis, but we were better able to estimate effect size in Experiment 2 and increased sample size accordingly. Alternatively, the difference in the stressors that we used across studies may have impacted the results. Calling one's partner to mind by thinking of his/her physical features may be more effective to buffer physical pain than psychological stress. Thinking about a partner's features may provide a safety cue to reduce pain (e.g., Eisenberger et al., 2011), or thinking of an object may provide a distraction from pain, but these mental activations may not be as effective to buffer active stress that requires performance under difficult environmental conditions. The present research does provide evidence that touch support promotes exploration better than the control conditions in both experiments. Taken together, these results suggest that individuals may benefit from recalling and imagining touch support rather than verbal support or simply thinking of their partners when their partners are not proximally accessible. According to a 2009 survey, 69% of employees cite work as a significant cause of stress in their lives, and 41% of employees agree that they typically feel “tense or stressed out” during the workday (American Psychological Association, 2009). The current research suggests that imagining a hug or massage from a partner before work or throughout the work day would provide greater stress relief and promote embracing challenges better than imagining a partner saying something encouraging or looking at a partner's photograph. Several limitations should be noted. First, the participants represented a restricted segment of the population of interest. Most participants were young and in dating relationships; we expect that the results would generalize to a broader age range and to longer-term relationships, but this must be tested in future research. Second, this study did not compare the effects of imagined touch to actual touch interactions. Although there is physiological correspondence between experiencing actual touch and imagining touch (e.g., Decety & Grezes, 2006), imagined touch may not be strictly equivalent to actual touch. Actual touch experiences might provide greater activation of stressbuffering pathways due to a stronger physiological activation of tactile receptors; alternatively, imagined touch might provide greater stressbuffering benefits because participants are able to imagine a type of touch that is most supportive for them, a standard that actual touch experiences might fail to meet. Nonetheless, our goal in this investigation was to examine effects of imagined touch, and the results provide an initial indication of the benefits of imagined touch. Partner imagery tasks also have been used in previous research and have impacted physiological responses (i.e., blood glucose and cortisol) without a partner's physical presence, which bolsters the validity of this type of task (Loving, Crocket, & Paxson, 2009; Stanton, Campbell, & Loving, 2014). Finally, these studies do not provide a clear explanation for why imagining verbal support was not effective to promote exploration or to buffer stress, and they should not be interpreted as conclusive evidence that imagined verbal support is ineffective. Participants who imagined verbal support were not more likely to recall a stressful experience than participants, who imagined touch support, and participants did not perceive imagining verbal support to be more difficult than imagining touch support; however, it is still possible that another procedural explanation exists. For instance, participants may have imagined recent touch support and more temporally-distant verbal support, or the imagined verbal support may have been less supportive than the imagined touch support, even though participants were instructed to think of times they felt supported. Additional research should replicate the contrast between touch and verbal support and investigate the mechanisms that explain their possible differential effectiveness. Future research should also extend these initial findings to investigate whether the effectiveness of imagined support activations differs based on individual differences like attachment style. Previous research has demonstrated that attachment style—including an individual's beliefs about whether their caregivers are likely to be available and supportive if needed—affects how people perceive support that they

receive (Collins & Feeney, 2004). Imagined support also may be experienced differently based on an individual's expectations of support. Additionally, although we speculated that imagined touch support may represent responsiveness and availability to promote security and reduce threat, future research should test the mechanisms by which imagined touch support impacts exploration and stress. In conclusion, the current work provides the first evidence that imagined touch support has pain- and stress-buffering benefits and promotes exploration (acceptance of challenge, enthusiasm for embracing challenges). Imagined touch support buffered stress and promoted exploration better than other imagined support. No prior work has considered the effects of imagined touch or demonstrated its benefits. Imagined touch support may be useful—especially when physical touch is not possible—to prevent the long-term health consequences associated with stress and to help individuals approach their personal goals. Physical touch in relationships is a largely unexplored area of the close relationships literature, but the encouraging findings reported herein suggest that an increasing focus on touch support may prove useful for enhancing personal and relational well-being. Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx. doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.001. Acknowledgment This work was funded by an internal grant (Graduate Small Project Help) from Carnegie Mellon University. We would also like to thank Bria Toneff for her help with this project. References Alter, A. L., Aronson, J., Darley, J. M., Rodriguez, C., & Ruble, D. N. (2010). Rising to the threat: Reducing stereotype threat by reframing the threat as a challenge. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 166–171. American Psychological Association (2009). Stress in America, 2009 Retrieved from http:// www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress-exec-summary.pdf Baldwin, M. W. (1992). Relational schemas and the processing of social information. Psychological Bulletin, 3, 461–484. Birkett, M. A. (2011). The trier social stress test protocol for inducing psychological stress. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 56(e3328), 1–6. Bolger, N., & Amarel, D. (2007). Effects of social support visibility on adjustment to stress: experimental evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 458–475. Bolger, N., Zuckerman, A., & Kessler, R. C. (2000). Invisible support and adjustment to stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 953–961. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Separation, anxiety, and anger. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Separation, anxiety, and anger. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. New York, NY: Basic Books. Breivik, H., Borchgrevink, P. C., Allen, S. M., Rosseland, L. A., Romundstad, L., Breivik Hals, E. K., ... Stubhaug, A. (2008). Assessment of pain. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 101, 17–24. Brown, J. L., Sheffield, D., Leary, M. R., & Robinson, M. E. (2003). Social support and experimental pain. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 276–283. Burleson, M. H., Trevathan, W. R., & Todd, M. (2007). In the mood for love or vice versa? Exploring the relations among sexual activity, physical affection, affect, and stress in the daily lives of mid-aged women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 357–368. Carnelley, K. B., & Rowe, A. C. (2007). Repeated priming of attachment security influences later views of self and relationships. Personal Relationships, 14, 307–320. Clark, M. S., Greenberg, A., Hill, E., Lemay, E. P., Clark-Polner, E., & Roosth, D. (2011). Heightened interpersonal security diminishes the monetary value of possessions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 359–364. Coan, J. A. (2008). Toward a neuroscience of attachment. In J. Cassidy, & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 241–265) (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: social regulation and the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17, 1032–1039. Cohen, S. (2004). Social relationships and health. American Psychologist, 59, 676–684. Collins, N. L., & Feeney, B. C. (2004). Working models of attachment shape perceptions of social support: Evidence from experimental and observational studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 363–383. Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenwald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16, 846–851. David, K. D., & Pope, G. E. (2002). Noxious cold evokes multiple sensations with distinct time courses. Pain, 98, 179–185. Decety, J., & Grezes, J. (2006). The power of simulation: Imagining one's own and other's behavior. Brain Research, 12, 4–14.

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