A Brief Gratitude Writing Intervention Decreased Stress and Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Exploring ways to mitigate the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic is important for long-term health. Expressive and gratitude-focused writing are effective methods to help individuals process traumatic or stressful events. Gratitude-focused writing may yield additional benefits because it helps individ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of happiness studies 2022, Vol.23 (6), p.2427-2448
Main Authors: Fekete, Erin M., Deichert, Nathan T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affect (Psychology)
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Economics
Emotions
Intervention
Pandemics
Personality and Social Psychology
Philosophy
Positive Psychology
Quality of Life Research
Research Paper
Social Sciences
Stress
Trauma
Writing
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Summary:Exploring ways to mitigate the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic is important for long-term health. Expressive and gratitude-focused writing are effective methods to help individuals process traumatic or stressful events. Gratitude-focused writing may yield additional benefits because it helps individuals appraise events positively. We hypothesized that an online gratitude writing intervention would yield greater benefits than an expressive writing intervention or control group. Participants were randomized to one of three groups and completed assessments one-week and one-month post-intervention. The gratitude writing group maintained gratitude levels and decreased stress and negative affect at one-month post-intervention. The expressive writing group decreased in gratitude and showed no changes in stress or negative affect at one-month post-intervention. The control group decreased in gratitude and negative affect and showed no changes in stress at one-month post-intervention. Gratitude writing may be a better resource for dealing with stress and negative affect than traditional expressive writing methods under extremely stressful situations with uncertain trajectories.
ISSN:1389-4978
1573-7780
DOI:10.1007/s10902-022-00505-6