A growing body of research demonstrates that when individuals talk or write about personal upheavals in their lives, they become less distressed and physically healthier. Several preliminary studies suggest that many of these health effects are the result of translating feelings and images into language. It is hypothesized that putting an experience into words results in less intense emotional responses and facilitates the cognitive processing of the experience. Over the three of the grant, a series of studies with college students and distressed recently unemployed adults will be conducted. The grant proposal is divided into two interdependent projects. The first involves five experiments that examine how the verbal expression of emotion affects subsequent emotion language, cognitive organization, and autonomic activity. It is hypothesized that when individuals verbally express an emotion, immediate drops in autonomic nervous system activity, lowered self-reported emotional intensity, and improvements in the ability to cognitively organized the emotional experience follow. Working in collaboration with another research group, this paradigm will be extended to learning the links between writing about emotional topics and longterm health and immune activity. Specifically, we predict that using emotion language will ultimately affect health, with changes in emotional intensity and cognitive organization of the events serving as mediators. The second phase of the project explores how putting an event into language influences individual's daily thoughts and emotions. Across two studies, college students and recently unemployed adults will undergo the Experience Sampling Method wherein they will be """"""""beeped"""""""" multiple times per day in the week before and after writing about either emotional or control topics. It is predicted that writing will exert its impact on health by reducing daily negative emotions and ruminations about upsetting events.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH052391-03
Application #
2675211
Study Section
Social and Group Processes Review Committee (SGP)
Project Start
1996-08-01
Project End
2000-06-30
Budget Start
1998-07-01
Budget End
2000-06-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Texas Austin
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
City
Austin
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
78712
Slatcher, Richard B; Robles, Theodore F; Repetti, Rena L et al. (2010) Momentary work worries, marital disclosure, and salivary cortisol among parents of young children. Psychosom Med 72:887-96
Kim, Youngsuk (2008) Effects of expressive writing among bilinguals: exploring psychological well-being and social behaviour. Br J Health Psychol 13:43-7
(2008) Revealing Dimensions of Thinking in Open-Ended Self-Descriptions: An Automated Meaning Extraction Method for Natural Language. J Res Pers 42:96-132
Vazire, Simine; Mehl, Matthias R (2008) Knowing me, knowing you: the accuracy and unique predictive validity of self-ratings and other-ratings of daily behavior. J Pers Soc Psychol 95:1202-16
Mehl, Matthias R; Vazire, Simine; Ramirez-Esparza, Nairan et al. (2007) Are women really more talkative than men? Science 317:82
Rentfrow, Peter J; Gosling, Samuel D (2006) Message in a ballad: the role of music preferences in interpersonal perception. Psychol Sci 17:236-42
Mehl, Matthias R (2006) The lay assessment of subclinical depression in daily life. Psychol Assess 18:340-5
Vazire, Simine; Funder, David C (2006) Impulsivity and the self-defeating behavior of narcissists. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 10:154-65
Slatcher, Richard B; Pennebaker, James W (2006) How do I love thee? Let me count the words: the social effects of expressive writing. Psychol Sci 17:660-4
Mehl, Matthias R; Gosling, Samuel D; Pennebaker, James W (2006) Personality in its natural habitat: manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. J Pers Soc Psychol 90:862-77

Showing the most recent 10 out of 33 publications