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32 - Symptoms, Secrets, Writing, and Words
- Edited by Saul Kassin, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
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- Book:
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Published online:
- 29 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 September 2022, pp 274-283
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I was born and reared in Midland, Texas, a small West Texas town fueled by new oil fields, optimism, ambition, alcohol, and greed. My parents, a lawyer and a bon vivant who were newly married, had moved there from New Orleans and Boston to take advantage of the oil boom – just like other new Midlanders. Most people we knew were temporary, coming and going once they made their fortune or were transferred by their oil companies, but my parents had come to stay. Mine was a Tom Sawyer-like childhood of adventures and social and scientific experiments and fire-setting, often bordering on delinquency.
96 - Expressive Writing
- from Section C - Psychotherapy and Behavior Change
- Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, New Jersey, Donald J. Foss, University of Houston
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- Book:
- Scientists Making a Difference
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
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- 11 August 2016, pp 462-465
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When people are asked to write about emotional upheavals for as little as fifteen minutes a day for three days, their physical and mental health often improves. Not a particularly shocking finding. But in 1986, when the first expressive writing study was published, the idea caused quite a stir.
The discovery of expressive writing was a mix of chance, dead ends, and the fitting together of a glorious puzzle. After graduate school, most of my research focused on the psychology of physical symptoms. When, how, and why did people notice symptoms and sensations? Although most studies were lab experiments, I was interested in the ways people reported and acted on their symptoms in the real world. Around this time, a student told me about her roommate, who was secretly gorging and purging large amounts of food almost every day. Later, other undergraduates admitted they were doing the same thing. There was virtually nothing in the research literature about bulimia at the time. Why not pass out a questionnaire to several hundred students to get a sense of its incidence and correlates?
Working with a small group of undergraduates, we devised a lengthy questionnaire that asked about eating behaviors, food preferences, and family eating practices. We threw in some random questions, asking about things such as how they got along with their parents, their health problems and behaviors, and “Prior to the age of 17, did you ever have a traumatic sexual experience?” Why did we include the sexual trauma question? No reason. It just sounded interesting.
The questionnaire went out to 800 undergraduates. Although we didn't find much about eating disorders, one powerful and unexpected finding emerged: People who claimed to have experienced a sexual trauma were more likely to have every health problem we asked about. The same pattern emerged on a large survey I conducted with the magazine Psychology Today a few months later. Both women and men who said they had experienced a sexual trauma were twice as likely to have been hospitalized in the previous year for any cause. They also reported that they were more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, high blood pressure, ulcers, colds, flus, and almost every other disease we asked about.
16 - The Healing Powers of Expressive Writing
- Edited by Scott Barry Kaufman, Yale University, Connecticut, James C. Kaufman, California State University, San Bernardino
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- Book:
- The Psychology of Creative Writing
- Published online:
- 25 January 2010
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- 22 June 2009, pp 264-274
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Over the past 20 years, the value of expressive writing has made the transition from anecdotal folk wisdom to a large and growing body of scientific research. Specifically, expressing thoughts and feelings about a traumatic event can improve one's mental and physical health (Frattaroli, 2006; Pennebaker, 1997; Smyth, 1998). As social and health psychologists, we give an overview of this line of research that began in the 1980s and has continued to proliferate up to the present. We now know that writing can have an impact on a broad range of physiological, physical, and mental states across many types of people. Non-health-related benefits have also been uncovered, and these are discussed as well. After describing the standard expressive writing paradigm and its application to creative writers, we discuss the role that language plays in this picture, including how language use can predict health benefits.
THE EXPRESSIVE WRITING PARADIGM
The procedure is simple and straightforward: Participants are asked to reflect on their deepest thoughts and feelings about a traumatic event. In the original studies, participants were randomly assigned to write about either an emotional topic or a control topic for 15 to 20 minutes each session for three to five sessions completed over the course of several days or weeks. One writing session was completed per day, and participants were often given the freedom to decide what time of day to write.
7 - Making History: Social and Psychological Processes Underlying Collective Memory
- Edited by Pascal Boyer, Washington University, St. Louis, James V. Wertsch, Washington University, St Louis
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- Book:
- Memory in Mind and Culture
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
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- 29 May 2009, pp 171-193
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The field of history is premised on the idea that knowledge of our past can inform our behaviors in the future. Indeed, this idea is central to many assumptions within personality, developmental, and clinical psychology. Implicit in this thinking is that history is somehow made up of immutable facts that are set in stone in society's memory. Who, after all, could doubt the accuracy of America's role in World War II, the facts surrounding the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492, the bravery and upstanding characters of the men who defended the Alamo in 1845, or the profound effect of the Magna Carta in 1215? These events, of course, are not as straightforward as we were taught in grade school. Events such as these undergo rethinking, reinterpreting, and even forgetting to become part of the permanent fabric of collective memory. But the transition from cultural upheaval to history does not happen all at once. The macrocosm of how a collective memory is built over centuries takes place on a much smaller scale beginning in the days, weeks, and months following an event.
The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that our current psychological state shapes our thinking about historical events in the same way that historical events shape our current thinking. Just as the key to the future may be the past, the key to the past may be the present. What about an event that makes it memorable?
Emotional expression and health
- from Psychology, health and illness
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- By Richard B. Slatcher, The University of Texas at Austin, James W. Pennebaker, The University of Texas at Austin
- Edited by Susan Ayers, University of Sussex, Andrew Baum, University of Pittsburgh, Chris McManus, Stanton Newman, Kenneth Wallston, John Weinman, Robert West
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- Book:
- Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine
- Published online:
- 18 December 2014
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- 23 August 2007, pp 84-87
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A longstanding puzzle within psychology and psychosomatic medicine concerns the relationship between the expression of emotions and physical health. Descartes and Shakespeare suggested that not expressing powerful emotions could be unhealthy. Similarly, William James (1890) and Franz Alexander (1950) forcefully argued that inhibiting the expression of strong emotions over time could result in physical health problems through basic biological stress-related channels (see ‘Psychoneuroimmunology’ and ‘Psychosomatics’). Despite these early hypotheses, there is still no overwhelming evidence to support the idea that the suppression of emotional expression is unhealthy and, conversely, that the open expression of emotions is beneficial.
Emotional expression has been viewed by our culture somewhat ambivalently. On the one hand, emotional expression is often viewed as rather uncivilized, as ‘giving in’ to passion (King & Emmons, 1990, p. 864). On the other hand, it is assumed that emotions usually should be let out, that the healthy end to an emotional response is emotional expression. This view is especially common in the psychological literature. From Breuer and Freud (1895/1966) to the present (e.g. Cole et al., 1996; Pelletier, 1985) the inherent value of naturally expressing one's thoughts and feelings has been emphasized. Emotional expression is thus viewed as a somewhat unseemly but normal part of everyday life.
While emotional expression is a normative behaviour which is neither good nor bad per se, actively holding back emotion through inhibition may have negative health consequences.