The impact of watching educational video clips on analogue patients’ physiological arousal and information recall

• Realistic video clips are more and more used in online self-help interventions.
• This educational method may evoke conscious and subconscious emotional arousal.
• We investigated the recall, self-reported and physiological arousal of three clips.
• A moderate level of physiological arousal was measured.
• The recall of information was within the pursued range.

ObjectiveInvestigating the influence of watching three educational patient–provider interactions on analogue patients’ emotional arousal and information recall.MethodsIn 75 analogue patients the emotional arousal was measured with physiological responses (electrodermal activity and heart rate) and self-reported arousal.ResultsA moderate increased level of physiological arousal was measured but not too much to inflict emotional distress. Recall of information was within the pursued range.ConclusionHence, physiological arousal is not expected to hinder the goals we pursue with our online intervention.Practice implicationsStill, developers and researchers should remain attentive to the self-reported (conscious) and hidden (subconscious) emotions evoked by the content of educational video clips presented in self-help interventions. A moderate increased level of arousal is preferred to increase the learning capacity. However, too much arousal may decrease the learning capacity and may cause distress, which should obviously be avoided for ethical reasons.