The costs and benefits of writing, talking, and thinking about life's triumphs and defeats

Three studies considered the consequences of writing, talking, and thinking about significant events. In Studies 1 and 2, students wrote, talked into a tape recorder, or thought privately about their worst (N = 96) or happiest experience (N = 111) for 15 min each during 3 consecutive days. In Study 3 (N = 112), students wrote or thought about their happiest day; half systematically analyzed, and half repetitively replayed this day. Well-being and health measures were administered before each study's manipulation and 4 weeks after. As predicted, in Study 1, participants who processed a negative experience through writing or talking reported improved life satisfaction and enhanced mental and physical health relative to those who thought about it. The reverse effect for life satisfaction was observed in Study 2, which focused on positive experiences. Study 3 examined possible mechanisms underlying these effects. Students who wrote about their happiest moments--especially when analyzing them--experienced reduced well-being and physical health relative to those who replayed these moments. Results are discussed in light of current understanding of the effects of processing life events.     

Current Concerns and Electrodermal Reactivity: Responses to Words and Thoughts

ABSTRACT Previous research has found that subjects rate words that are closely related to their current concerns as affectively more arousing than other words. This investigation inquires whether a similar relationship occurs when arousal is measured electrodermally, and whether nonspecific (spontaneous) electrodermal activity is associated with self-generated thoughts about current concerns. In the first experiment, subjects listened to audiotaped sequences of three-word clusters associated with previously measured own current concerns or with concerns of others. Mean skin conductance responses were significantly larger for clusters related to subjects' own concerns than for those related to others' concerns, although many subjects contributing to this effect showed some awareness of the hypothesis. In the second experiment, thoughts that accompanied nonspecific skin conductance responses received significantly higher self-ratings for concern-relatedness and arousal than thoughts that occurred during electrodermal inactivity. In Experiment 3, they were rated higher for current-concern content and anxiety and lower for mental imagery and dormant-concern content than thoughts during electrodermal inactivity.     

The suppression of exciting thoughts

We examined how the suppression of an exciting thought influences sympathetic arousal as indexed by skin conductance level (SCL). Subjects were asked to think aloud as they followed instructions to think about or not to think about various topics. Experiment 1 showed that trying not to think about sex, like thinking about sex, elevates SCL in comparison to thinking about or not thinking about less exciting topics (e.g., dancing). Experiment 2 revealed that the suppression of the thought of sex yielded SCL elevation whether or not subjects believed their think-aloud reports would be private or public, and it also revealed that the effect dissipated over the course of a few minutes. Experiment 3 found such dissipation again but showed that subsequent intrusions of the suppressed exciting thought are associated with further elevations in SCL over 30 min. Because such an association was not found when subjects were trying to think about the exciting thought, it was suggested that the suppression of exciting thoughts might be involved in the production of chronic emotional responses such as phobias and obsessive preoccupations.     

Time went by so slowly: Overestimation of event duration by males and females

In three experiments, 469 subjects watched a short videotape of a bank robbery and later estimated the duration of the tape. Subjects invariably overestimated the durations. Accuracy of time estimation was unrelated to amount of free recall (Experiment 1) or accuracy of memory (Experiment 2). Females overestimated to a greater degree than males (Experiments 2 and 3). A more stressful version of the event produced greater overestimates than a less stressful version (Experiment 3). The relationship between induced arousal and time estimation appears to be different for men and women.     

Skin conductance responses as predictor of emotional responses to stressful life events

Preferential preattentive processing towards threat has been proposed to play a casual role in the development of anxiety, mainly because it reliably predicts emotional responding to stressful events. However, in the investigation of the predictive value of preferential preattentive processing towards threat, the emotional Stroop task has exclusively being used. This study was designed to prospectively investigate the predictive value of skin conductance reactivity in response to masked (i.e., preattentively perceived) threatening pictures on emotional responding following stressful life events. To collect skin conductance data, the picture perception task was administered to 136 police recruits due to enroll into active duty within 2-4 months. To assess psychological distress following emotionally stressful life events, the impact of event scale were administered approximately 24 months later. Controlling for trait anxiety, analyses indicated that enhanced skin conductance reactivity in response to masked threatening pictures (relative to neutrals) was a strong predictor of emotional responding to stressful life events. This finding support preferential preattentive processing towards threat as a relatively independent factor predictive of emotional responding.     

Inducing behaviour change in adolescent delinquents

Approximately forty delinquents were offered part-time jobs of talking into a tape recorder about anything they wished. A simple reinforcement procedure was initiated whereby attendance at work became dependable and prompt within twenty-five meetings. A three-year follow-up of the first twenty employees showed a significant reduction in the frequency and severity of crime when compared to a matched-pair control group. The use of referral and “treatment” procedures was minimal.     

Some psychological effects associated with positive and negative thinking about stressful event outcomes: was Pollyanna right?

This study investigated psychological effects associated with tendencies to focus one's thinking on positive versus negative outcomes of concluded stressful events, called respectively, positive and negative thinking. Four questions were addressed: (a) whether positive and negative thinking benefit or reduce psychological well-being, (b) whether these effects are transitory or enduring, (c) whether they are limited to thoughts about an event's impact on oneself or generalize to thoughts about an event's external consequences, and (d) whether tendencies to think positively or negatively about prior stressors influence psychological vulnerability to the impact of future ones. College students completed an event-outcome appraisal questionnaire designed to make salient positive and negative thoughts about the outcomes of recent stressful events. Subjects' well-being was then assessed both immediately after the salience manipulation and again 8 weeks later. Positive thinking increased the well-being that subjects reported immediately after their thoughts were assessed, but was unrelated to the well-being they reported after an 8-week delay. This suggests that although thinking positively about past event outcomes may temporarily lead to perceptions of increased well-being while the thoughts are salient, it has no enduring influence. In contrast, negative thinking was associated with lower reported well-being not only when the thoughts were salient but after a delay as well. Psychological effects associated with both types of thinking were due mostly to self-relevant thoughts rather than to externally relevant ones. Negative thinking about prior stressor outcomes appeared to increase vulnerability to the impact of later ones on several aspects of well-being. Overall, results for negative thinking are consistent with evidence reported after an 8-week delay. This suggests that although thinking positively effects that persist over time. However, positive thinking does not seem to have beneficial effects that continue once these thoughts are no longer salient.     

How eyewitnesses talk about events: implications for memory

Eyewitnesses to traumatic events typically talk about them, and they may do so for different reasons. Of interest was whether qualitatively different retellings would lead to differences in later memory. All participants watched a violent film scene; one third talked about their emotional reactions to the film (as one might do when talking to a friend), one third described the events of the film (as the police might request), and one third did unrelated tasks. Following a delay, all participants were tested on their memories for the clip. Talking about emotions led to better memory for one's emotions, but also led to subjectivity and a greater proportion of major errors in free recall. Differences were minimized on tests providing more retrieval cues, suggesting that retellings' consequences for memory are greater when retellers have to generate their own retrieval structures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory for traumatic events

This research compares memory for traumatic events with memory for non-traumatic versions of the same event. In Experiment 1, subjects watched an event depicted in slides while focusing and rehearsing the central detail of each slide. They were tested after a short or a longer retention interval (20 min or 2 weeks). Subjects who watched the traumatic version were better able to recall the central details that they had rehearsed, but were less well able to recognize the specific slides that they saw. Better recall for the traumatic group did not occur because the words used to describe the recalled details were inherently more memorable, as shown in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, subjects watched either a traumatic or non-traumatic version of a filmed event and about 6 months later they were asked to remember the essence of the film. Subjects who saw the traumatic version were better able to recall the essence of the film. A similar finding was obtained with a group of subjects from Experiment 1 who were also contacted about 6 months after their initial participation. These results suggest that some information (the essence, the theme) of a traumatic event might be relatively well retained in memory, while memory is impaired for many of the specific, and especially peripheral, details.     

Olfactory cuing of autobiographical memory

In Experiment 1, subjects were presented with either the odors or the names of 15 common objects. In Experiment 2, subjects were presented with either the odors, photographs, or names of 16 common objects. All subjects were asked to describe an autobiographical memory evoked by each cue, to date each memory, and to rate each memory on vividness, pleasantness, and the number of times that the memory had been thought of and talked about prior to the experiment. Compared with memories evoked by photographs or names, memories evoked by odors were reported to be thought of and talked about less often prior to the experiment and were more likely to be reported as never having been thought of or talked about prior to the experiment. No other effects were consistently found, though there was a suggestion that odors might evoke more pleasant and emotional memories than other types of cues. The relation of these results to the folklore concerning olfactory cuing is discussed.     

Tape-recording data for a cumulative recorder and for programming interval schedules

A simple method for recording discrete events with a cassette tape recorder is described. Since the converter for the recorder is inexpensive, data for several subjects can be recorded simultaneously. The recorder-converter can also be used to program interval schedules. Cassette recorded responses for a subject can be played into a cumulative recorder.     

Retrospective duration estimation of public events

In three experiments, we investigated subjects' retrospective estimation of the duration of publicly reported events such as, for example, the Falkland's war. In Experiment 1, duration estimates were found to be positively correlated with event knowledge, in keeping with Ornstein's (1969) model of duration estimation. Event duration was, however, generally underestimated, suggesting that the relationship between event knowledge and estimated duration might reflect an increase in estimation accuracy. Other results of Experiment 1 were consistent with this interpretation and suggested that the duration estimates might be largely reconstructed. In Experiment 2, duration estimates of specific events and general categories of events were found to be highly correlated, and the subjects in Experiment 3 indicated that they used knowledge of the general characteristic of different types of events to estimate event duration. Overall, reallife duration estimates appear to be based on a combination of specific event information and knowledge derived about that category of event.     

The dispositional shift in attribution over time

Two experiments examined the effect of time on causal attributions. In Experiment I, subjects who described themselves into a tape recorder assumed more personal responsibility for their behavior after 3 weeks' time than others who explained their behavior immediately after its occurrence. In Experiment II, actor-subjects took part in a getting acquainted conversation and explained their behavior more dispositionally and less situationally after 3 weeks' time than they had initially, while observer-subjects experienced no change over time. Results were interpreted in terms of an altered self-perspective in memory and the diminished salience of situational details over time.     

Hypnotic blindness, awareness, and attribution

Examined whether performance on a spelling task would be influenced by visual information in the reported absence of hypnotized subjects' awareness of that information. Experiment 1 visually presented uncommon spellings of homophones to subjects before and during a suggestion for hypnotic blindness, and subsequently tested subjects' spelling of the homophones. Words presented during hypnotic blindness influenced subjects' spelling performance. Subjects' attributions of their performance did not involve awareness of the homophones. Experiment 2 used the nonexperiment methodology to examine the impact of demand characteristics and indicated that the performance attributions of subjects of Experiment 1 could not be explained in these terms. The discussion focuses on implicit perception in hypnotic blindness and on the relevance of attributions about behavioral performance on hypnotic phenomena.     

Diagnostic reasoning with circumstantial evidence

Individuals often evaluate hypotheses about the cause of particular events on the basis of circumstantial evidence. This article describes a quantitative model of belief revision with circumstantial evidence. The model assumes that subjects revise belief on the basis of a cascaded reasoning process that combines beliefs about three premises—the association of a clue and a possible cause, and forward and backward implications of the clue—to revise belief in a causal hypothesis. Subjects in three experiments solved fictional murder mysteries, reporting on each trial a subset of the beliefs specified by the model. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the model provides a good account of the reasoning process, over several contexts in which clues are evaluated. Subjects appear to develop causal models that affect the interpretation of clues. Experiment 2 provides further evidence on the development of causal models and compares the present model with a model based on Bayes' theorem. Experiment 3 is a control experiment which demonstrates that the belief assessments used in Experiments 1 and 2 do not alter the process of belief revision. Tests of subjects' memory for suspect-clue associations provide further support for the hypothesis that subjects develop causal models of the true cause and demonstrate the contrast between reasoning with currently available information and retrospective access to the facts on which belief revision is based. The present view is compared with other theories of causal thinking and belief revision.     

Distribution of Traumatic and Other Stressful Life Events by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, SES and Age: A Review of the Research

Much research has shown that reports of stressful life events are related to a wide variety of psychiatric and physical health outcomes. Relatively little research exists, however, on the distribution of the events according to gender, age, racial/ethnic background, and socioeconomic status (SES). Such information would help identify groups at greatest risk for further investigation. This paper presents a review of the relevant studies. We find that traumatic (e.g., life threatening) events appear to be more frequent for men, while men and women differ more consistently on types rather than on overall numbers of stressful events other than traumatic. Traumatic and other stressful events tend to be more frequent in low SES and racial/ethnic minorities groups, and finally, both traumatic and other stressful events are reported more by younger age groups in samples 18 years of age and older. The limitations and implications of these findings for further research and preventive interventions are discussed, especially the need for more detailed information about individual events.     

Illness representations: a prototype approach

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that laypeople cognitively organize and recall information about physical symptoms according to prototyped conceptions they have of physical diseases. Based on pilot studies that identified the extent to which subjects associated specified symptoms with specific diseases, symptom sets were assembled to vary in the extent to which the symptoms were perceived to be associated with (to be prototypical of) a given disease. Experiment 1 asked subjects to indicate whether a given set of symptoms indicated a disease and, if so, which one. Experiment 2 tested subjects' recall for symptom sets varying in prototypicality for given diseases and also tested the effects on recall of giving subjects a diagnosis. Results of both experiments support the prototype hypothesis that information about physical symptoms is organized and processed according to people's preexisting beliefs about the association between particular symptoms and diseases. Implications for illness behavior and help seeking are discussed.     

Response biases and the relation between negative life events and psychological symptoms

This research was an investigation of whether reporting biases can account for the correlation between negative life events (as measured via life events questionnaires) and subclinical psychological symptoms. Subjects completed two life events scales, a measure of psychological symptoms, a measure of depression, and a measure of social desirability. Friends were asked to report about life events experienced by the subjects. No evidence was found for a subject reporting bias associated with social desirability, depression, or symptoms. In fact, for one of the life events scales, depression was significantly associated with a higher rate of agreement between subjects and friends as to which negative events occurred to subjects. Moreover, there were significant correlations between symptom and depression measures and life events measures that were free of subject-reporting biases (subjects' negative life events reported by both subjects and their significant others, as well as subjects' negative life events as reported by significant others alone). These data suggest that response biases may not be able to account for the relation between negative events and psychological symptoms. Thus the hypothesis that negative life events play a significant role in symptom development remains plausible.     

School Aged Children’s Experiences 7 and 13 Months Following a Sibling’s Death

This study described 6-year to 12-year-old children’s responses 7 and 13 months after siblings’ NICU/PICU/ED death. Using semi-structured interviews, at 7 months, children were asked about events around their sibling’s death. At both 7 and 13 months, children were asked about their thoughts and feelings about the deceased, concerns or fears, and life changes since the death. Thirty one children (58% female), recruited from four South Florida hospitals and Florida obituaries, participated. Children’s mean age was 8.4 years; 64.5% were Black, 22.5% Hispanic, 13% White. Interviews were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Resulting themes: circumstances of the death, burial events, thinking about and talking to the deceased sibling, fears, and life changes. Most children knew their sibling’s cause of death, attended funeral/memorials, thought about and talked to their deceased sibling, reported changes in family and themselves over the 13 months. Fears (something happening to themselves, parents, other siblings—death, cancer, being snatched away) decreased from 7 to 13 months especially in 7-year to 9-year-olds. Seven-year to 9-year-olds reported the greatest change in themselves from 7 to 13 months. More Black children and girls thought about the deceased and reported more changes in themselves over the 13 months. School aged children thought about and talked with their deceased sibling, reported changes in themselves and their family and their fears decreased over the first 13 months after their sibling’s death     

Partners and Fellow Patients: Two Sources of Emotional Support for Women with Breast Cancer

This study examined the helping process that occurred when 26 breast cancer patients (the disclosers) talked about their illness-related concerns with their partner and, in a separate conversation, with a fellow patient (the volunteer helpers). The conversations were rated by trained observers and by the disclosers in terms of several process and outcome variables. From the observers' perspective, the volunteer helpers were more helpful, empathic, and supportive, less critical, and used more self-disclosure than the partners. Disclosers did not differentiate between the two types of helper, and gave generally high ratings to both conversations. Strengths and weaknesses of each type of helper were identified. Findings are discussed in relation to the literature on formal and informal helping, and implications for training nonprofessional helpers are suggested.