Writing or talking about upsetting emotional experiences is associated with improvements m mental and physical health, including lower rates of depressive symptoms, adjustment difficulties, and well as common illnesses and physical symptoms. The goal of this project is to explore the social, physiological, and personality correlates of this phenomenon. Over the five year proposed grant period, the four issues will be addressed: 1. Defining and measuring social integration and coherence using a recording device that measures real-world language and social behaviors. In developing a social integration model, the components to be measured include time talking in-depth with others, more concentrated time on task, greater correspondent between speaker and listener, and changes in linguistic content congruent with markers of physical and mental health - with particular attention to markers of stress, depression, and psychological adjustment. 2. Learning how writing about an emotional experience increases levels of social integration and coherence compared with writing about control topics. This model will be tested with healthy college students, medical students facing their first dissections, and stressed city employees. In addition to changes in social behaviors, the various studies will examine changes in depression, cortisol levels, and autonomic nervous system activity before and after writing. 3. Identifying individual differences to learn who is most likely to benefit from disclosive writing. The first lab study will determine if individuals who are most likely to benefit from emotional writing are the same individuals who are least likely to benefit from superficial writing. A second study will learn who benefits from writing by using a variety of questionnaires and tasks to identify those people who can best construct narratives and/or benefit independently from constructing narratives. A third project will determine the heritability of language usage by drawing on an archive of data from Mz and DZ twins raised together and apart. 4. Mapping how individuals talk, interact, and move about in the natural environment using the environmental monitor recording procedure. Once established, one or more studies will examine how individuals use their social resources when dealing with significant emotional upheavals in their worlds. Measures of physician use, autonomic functioning, and illness reports will serve as outcome measures and correlates in each of the studies.
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