Emotional expression, expressive writing, and cancer.

Everyone has problem to solve. Each problem has positive and negative impacts but it makes someone stronger. This research aims to figure out the effectiveness of expressive writing and social media as media to express thought, ideas, and emotion of the users. The arrangement of research is descriptive studies through the examination a number of social media accounts by employing purposive sampling method. Expressive writing is an activity to direct to communication skill through writing for sharing feelings, thoughts, and anything that is wanted by the user without a feeling of being blamed by somebody else. Expressive writing becomes one of curative alternatives to solve traumatic experience and other psychological matters. Expressive writing helps someone to release emotional expression. Expressive writing in the era of technology is not only performed in conventional ways, handwriting but also performed through modern devices. Social media such as facebook, twitter, and path is a product of technology that is popularly used to share problems (expressive writing). This is phenomenology research. It shows that 150 user accounts of facebook, twitter, and path conduct expressive writing to release their emotional expression on problems that they are facing. Based on the research, it is found the impact of social anxiety on the reliance on social media that is significant and positive.

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How benefits of expressive writing vary as a function of writing instructions, ethnicity and ambivalence over emotional expression

Psychology and Health ◽

10.1080/08870440902883196 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 25 (6) ◽

pp. 669-684 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

Qian Lu ◽

Annette L. Stanton

Keyword(s):

Emotional Expression ◽

Expressive Writing ◽

Ambivalence Over Emotional Expression ◽

Writing Instructions

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A Meta-Analysis of Expressive Writing on Positive Psychology Variables and Traumatic Stress

10.31219/osf.io/u98cw ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jeffrey Michael Pavlacic ◽

Erin Michelle Buchanan ◽

Nicholas Maxwell ◽

Tabetha Gaile Hopke ◽

Stefan E. Schulenberg

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Posttraumatic Growth ◽

Posttraumatic Stress ◽

Emotional Expression ◽

Effect Size ◽

Expressive Writing ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Psychological Outcomes ◽

Effect Sizes

Emotional expression has been shown to be benficial for promoting both positive psychological and physical health outcomes. Unfortunately, inhibiting emotions can lead to impairments in physical and psychological health. James Pennebaker showed that expressive writing is an effective form of emotional expression, and he and others have used expressive writing as an experimental manipulation to gauge its effectiveness in treating a wide variety of health-related and psychological outcomes. While many studies have been conducted that examine the effectiveness of expressive writing across such outcomes, a considerable amount of these studies tend to neglect necessary considerations such as power and meaningfulness of respective effect sizes. Four previous meta-analyses have been conducted that examine expressive writing's affect on psychological outcomes, however, these studies focus on the experimental versus control group effect size. Thus, our meta-analysis sought to examine the effectiveness of an expressive writing intervention on only the experimental conditions in studies measuring posttraumatic growth, posttraumatic stress, and quality of life using random effects models. Results indicated a small overall effect size for posttraumatic stress and negligible to small effect sizes for posttraumatic growth and quality of life. Implications for future research design and interpretation of published research are discussed.

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Beeinträchtigtes Erkennen emotionaler Gesichtsausdrücke durch psychiatrische Patientinnen bei Alexithymie

Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie Psychologie und Psychotherapie ◽

10.1024/1661-4747/a000135 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 61 (1) ◽

pp. 7-15 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Daniel Dittrich ◽

Gregor Domes ◽

Susi Loebel ◽

Christoph Berger ◽

Carsten Spitzer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Emotional Expression ◽

Depression Scale ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Check List ◽

Psychosomatische Erkrankungen ◽

Psychiatrische Patienten ◽

Symptom Check List ◽

Tas 20

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Hypothese eines mit Alexithymie assoziierten Defizits beim Erkennen emotionaler Gesichtsaudrücke an einer klinischen Population. Darüber hinaus werden Hypothesen zur Bedeutung spezifischer Emotionsqualitäten sowie zu Gender-Unterschieden getestet. 68 ambulante und stationäre psychiatrische Patienten (44 Frauen und 24 Männer) wurden mit der Toronto-Alexithymie-Skala (TAS-20), der Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Scale (MADRS), der Symptom-Check-List (SCL-90-R) und der Emotional Expression Multimorph Task (EEMT) untersucht. Als Stimuli des Gesichtererkennungsparadigmas dienten Gesichtsausdrücke von Basisemotionen nach Ekman und Friesen, die zu Sequenzen mit sich graduell steigernder Ausdrucksstärke angeordnet waren. Mittels multipler Regressionsanalyse untersuchten wir die Assoziation von TAS-20 Punktzahl und facial emotion recognition (FER). Während sich für die Gesamtstichprobe und den männlichen Stichprobenteil kein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen TAS-20-Punktzahl und FER zeigte, sahen wir im weiblichen Stichprobenteil durch die TAS-20 Punktzahl eine signifikante Prädiktion der Gesamtfehlerzahl (β = .38, t = 2.055, p < 0.05) und den Fehlern im Erkennen der Emotionen Wut und Ekel (Wut: β = .40, t = 2.240, p < 0.05, Ekel: β = .41, t = 2.214, p < 0.05). Für wütende Gesichter betrug die Varianzaufklärung durch die TAS-20-Punktzahl 13.3 %, für angeekelte Gesichter 19.7 %. Kein Zusammenhang bestand zwischen der Zeit, nach der die Probanden die emotionalen Sequenzen stoppten, um ihre Bewertung abzugeben (Antwortlatenz) und Alexithymie. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit unterstützen das Vorliegen eines mit Alexithymie assoziierten Defizits im Erkennen emotionaler Gesichtsausdrücke bei weiblchen Probanden in einer heterogenen, klinischen Stichprobe. Dieses Defizit könnte die Schwierigkeiten Hochalexithymer im Bereich sozialer Interaktionen zumindest teilweise begründen und so eine Prädisposition für psychische sowie psychosomatische Erkrankungen erklären.

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Physical and Psychological Benefits of Written Emotional Expression

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040/a000231 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 20 (4) ◽

pp. 242-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Éva Kállay

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Expressive Writing ◽

Mental Health Problems ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Health Problems ◽

Future Research ◽

Psychological Benefits ◽

Cost Effective Treatment ◽

Meta Analyses

Abstract. The last several decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of individuals suffering from both diagnosable and subsyndromal mental health problems. Consequently, the development of cost-effective treatment methods, accessible to large populations suffering from different forms of mental health problems, became imperative. A very promising intervention is the method of expressive writing (EW), which may be used in both clinically diagnosable cases and subthreshold symptomatology. This method, in which people express their feelings and thoughts related to stressful situations in writing, has been found to improve participants’ long-term psychological, physiological, behavioral, and social functioning. Based on a thorough analysis and synthesis of the published literature (also including most recent meta-analyses), the present paper presents the expressive writing method, its short- and long-term, intra-and interpersonal effects, different situations and conditions in which it has been proven to be effective, the most important mechanisms implied in the process of recovery, advantages, disadvantages, and possible pitfalls of the method, as well as variants of the original technique and future research directions.

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