Transformational Processing of Negative Life Events Through Expressive Writing: An Experimental Manipulation

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2012
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Though a wealth of existing research demonstrates correlations between written narrative processing of negative events and various well-being outcomes, the current experimental manipulation pursues the issue of causality. 79 subjects were assigned to one of four writing conditions (explore, resolve, combination, and control), and those in the experimental conditions received different prompts to write about a centrally challenging life event for 15 minutes on each of the three consecutive writing days. While we failed to show a significant causal relationship between writing condition and any changes in our measures of well being over time, we did find a significant condition x day interaction on growth. This interaction showed an increase in growth over time unique to the combo condition, which suggests that exploring and then resolving produces the most growth. Because our study indicates that different prompted forms of processing do in fact encourage different outcomes, we hope that future longitudinal studies will be better able to address the long-term path and outcomes for different processing mechanisms.
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