The following is an excerpt of the intervention methodology. For more information, please see the full text of the article on the publisher's website or through your institution's library.

Procedure

 [...] they were randomized into one of two imagined interactions conditions. In the experimental condition, participants were asked to imagine someone close to them was disclosing their sexuality to them. Those in the control condition were given no specific imagined interaction and were asked to imagine a recent interaction they had with someone. Participants in both conditions were asked to report what relationship they had to the person they imagined, write out a brief dialogue between themselves and the person, and then they were given the Self-Understanding Imagined Interaction Scale (Honeycutt, Citation2003). This self-report method is consistent with imagined interactions research. [...]

Finally, participants were randomized into one of two video conditions. Those in the disclosure video condition watched a 3 minute and 17 second video that entailed a young woman disclosing to her followers and anyone watching that she was gay. Those in the non-disclosure video watched a 3 minute and 12 second video that entailed the same young woman but did not include any disclosure of her sexuality. The videos were unpublished and posted to YouTube. [...]

Materials
For the experimental condition, two videos were created to showcase a young woman posing as a YouTube blogger. A call for performers was sent out to the theater department and LGBTQ social department at the University of Connecticut, and an informal interview was conducted to hire the performer, who was a 19-year-old woman with feminine features and youthful pulchritude synonymous with popular YouTube disclosure videos. Two scripts were written, one for the disclosure video and one for the control condition. Both videos were filmed on the same day using a laptop camera to emulate the online video feel. An interpersonal scholar (cisgender and heterosexual) in the department not affiliated with the research project aided in the filming and directing of the videos to ensure quality and heteronormative response (someone not affiliated with the LGBTQ+ community). [...]

In the experimental video condition (n = 486), the young woman discloses her sexuality and discusses her struggles and triumphs regarding these disclosures and identity trials. The control video condition (n = 489) consisted of a similar style as the experimental video with a question-and-answer section at the end that carefully avoids gendered pronouns, but the young woman never directly discloses her sexuality. [...]

Measures
Homophobia
Homophobia was measured using the Homophobia Scale (Wright et al., Citation1999; α =.94; M = 1.76, SD = .69), which consists of 24 items on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (none) to 5 (all) asking participants to report their behavioral and emotional responses to interactions with non-heterosexual persons. The scale asks questions such as, “Gay people make me nervous” and “Homosexuality is acceptable to me.”

Emotion
Emotions were broken into two categories: positive and negative. The two positive emotions were happiness (M = 2.49, SD = 1.29) and admiration (M = 2.49, SD = 1.43). The two negative emotions were disgust (M = 1.21, SD = .65) and hatred (M = 1.12, SD = .52). It is important to note that while these categories indicate a black-and-white good-versus-bad conceptual definition, there are gray areas with emotion (cite), but for the sake of clarity and simplification, they are labeled thusly as positive and negative. The emotions were measured using the Emotional Uses and Gratifications Scale II (Buck, Citation2003; Strizhakova, Kang, & Buck, Citation2007). The four emotions were measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always), asking participants to indicate their emotional responses after viewing the videos.

Self-understanding imagined interactions
Self-understanding imagined interactions were measured using the prompt and self-understanding subscale from the Survey of Imagined Interactions (Honeycutt, Citation2003). Participants were placed into two conditions and asked to either imagine any type of interaction with another person (control condition) or imagine someone close to them was disclosing their sexuality to them (experimental condition). They were then prompted to write a colloquy between themselves and this person. Finally, they were asked to report their self-understanding of themselves in this imagined interaction. The self-understanding subscale (α = .98; M = 4.22, SD = 1.39) consists of four items on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (NO!) to 7 (YES!) with questions such as, “The imagined interaction helped me understand myself better” and “The imagined interaction helped me in clarifying my thoughts and feelings with the interaction partner.”