Editor's Statement

Abstract

The second issue of Volume 41 contains five studies. New research on coping with COVID-19 in terms of mental imagery in the form of imagined interactions. The first pair of studies examine imagine interactions with artificial intelligence in terms of Alexa and using imagined interactions to deal with unemployment and communication apprehension during the time of COVID-19 isolation. The third study examines moral identity and scaling, while the fourth study examines imagery in association with vividness and clarity. The final study examines dreams. We briefly highlight each article, in turn. The initial study dealing with imagined interactions is by Tim Gaspard and Phil Madison. They begin by noting how people and agents of artificial intelligence (AI) interact more frequently than before through voice-powered assistants such as Alexa. AI is treated as human interaction. They examine the use of six functions of imagined interactions (IIs)—rehearsal, self-understanding, relational maintenance, conflict linkage, compensation, and catharsis in conjunction with AI talk and actual human-to-human talk. Their implications are intriguing, insofar as humans and machine interactions coevolve in the 21st century. The ensuing study is by Mary Sealy. She investigated a covariate of loneliness, communication apprehension during the COVID-19 pandemic. As she noted, the COVID-19 restrictions restricted movement and physical access, including staying at home and working remotely; the so-called telework. It is interesting that as income increases, the proactivity of imagined interactions decreases during the pandemic coping, and as income increases, so does communication apprehensions regardless of the pandemic, and that those who earn more annually tend to experience higher levels of CA. Participants who identified themselves as shy, social, reserved, or outgoing, indicated experiencing a greater variety in their IIs, as well as more discrepant IIs. These findings indicate that, regardless of the social restrictions placed on society, an individual’s drive to be social and outgoing is what may truly impact their IIs and CA. Nonparametric tests resulted in several significant findings between employment status and the frequency, proactivity, variety, self-dominance, compensation, and relational maintenance aspects of IIs. Editorial