What do daily reports add to the picture? Results from a photography intervention designed to increase positive emotion

Although meta-analytic reviews highlight the small average impact of positive psychology interventions (PPIs), it is often unclear how or why interventions succeed. A pilot study of Picture This! - a smartphone-based photography intervention designed to increase awareness of and attention to daily p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of positive psychology 2020-09, Vol.15 (5), p.639-644
Main Authors: McKee, Laura G., Algoe, Sara B., Faro, Alyssa L., O'Leary, Jessica L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ecological momentary assessment
Emotions
experience sampling method
Feasibility
Intervention
Life satisfaction
Photography
positive emotion
Positive emotions
Positive psychology
Quasi-experimental methods
technology
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Summary:Although meta-analytic reviews highlight the small average impact of positive psychology interventions (PPIs), it is often unclear how or why interventions succeed. A pilot study of Picture This! - a smartphone-based photography intervention designed to increase awareness of and attention to daily positive emotions - is presented as a case study that demonstrates the power of experience sampling method (ESM) in assessing engagement and testing one mechanism hypothesized to account for intervention success. The ESM design allowed us to document equal engagement for participants in intervention and control conditions while also linking positive emotions elicited from the daily picture-taking exercise with nightly and end-of-study outcomes. Greater positive emotions experienced when taking photographs by the intervention group, relative to controls, partially explained higher savoring beliefs and greater life satisfaction post-intervention. This pilot highlights the benefits of using a high-powered quasi-experimental analytic approach to examine feasibility and purported mechanism of PPIs.
ISSN:1743-9760
1743-9779
DOI:10.1080/17439760.2020.1789697