A FOLLOW-UP STUDY ON LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL ROLE PLAYING

Follow-up interviews were conducted with 35 Ss in order to investigate the long-term changes in smoking habits produced by an emotional role-playing procedure which required Ss to act for 1 hr. like a lung-cancer victim. Over an 18-mo. period a group of 12 female college students who had actively engaged in the emotional role-playing performance consistently showed significantly less cigarette consumption than an equivalent passive control group of 10 Ss who had heard a recording of an emotional role-playing performance (p < .05). During the 18-mo. period the Surgeon General's report appears to have produced a further decrease in the cigarette consumption of both experimental groups, but only a temporary decrease in an additional group of 13 untreated controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1968 American Psychological Association.