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Effects of Writing About Emotions Versus Goals on Psychological and Physical Health.
- Source :
-
Journal of Personality . Feb2006, Vol. 74 Issue 1, p267-286. 20p. 2 Charts, 3 Graphs. - Publication Year :
- 2006
-
Abstract
- A randomized, controlled trial compared writing about emotional topics (EMO) to writing about goals as the “best possible self” (BPS; after King, 2001 ) and evaluated emotional approach coping, i.e., efforts to cope through processing and expressing emotion, as a moderator of writing effects on psychological and physical health in 64 third-year medical students. In participants with higher baseline hostility, the EMO condition was associated with less hostility at 3 months compared to the BPS and control conditions. Emotional processing (EP) and emotional expression (EE) moderated the effect of experimental condition on depressive symptoms at 3 months; high EP/EE participants reported fewer depressive symptoms in the EMO condition, whereas low EP/EE individuals reported fewer depressive symptoms in the BPS condition compared to the EMO and control conditions. A moderating effect of EP on physical health was also identified, such that low EP individuals who wrote about goals (BPS) had fewer health care visits at 3 months compared to low EP participants in the EMO and control conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00223506
- Volume :
- 74
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Personality
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 19398054
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00375.x