preview

To Better See The Effects Of Expressive Writing, Three

Better Essays

To better see the effects of expressive writing, three unique scholarly articles were compiled and summarized. These articles are set in chronological order, to make it easier for the reader to see the steady progression of advancement in the field of expressive writing. The three articles may reference a University psychologist professor named James W. Pennebaker who has made many advancements in the field. Overall, the studies referenced show overall improvement in health, however further testing is needed. This essay is not intended to persuade, only to summarize some of the research done in the 21st century.
Keywords: expressive writing, James W. Pennebaker, Richard B Slatcher, Siri Carpenter,

Overview
Expressive writing is used to …show more content…

The subjects were to complete three 20-minute writing sessions during a two-week period. The students split into two groups, where the control group only had to reflect on how they felt that day whereas the experimental group were instructed to write their deepest thoughts about coming to college and to overall conclude at the end of their essays.
Then, Klein and Boals, measured the participants working memory three times, once before the first writing session, once one week into the experiment and one last time after the last writing session. The duo concluded that the group who worked on expressive writing had some improvements in their memory, while the group who had a neutral writing assignment had no improvements. Although this study was very supportive toward the idea of expressive writing expanding working memory, the results were still too vague to definitively say that better memory was the result of expressive writing. Klein and Boals decided to retry the experiment a second time. This time, the team of researchers wanted some of the subjects to write about an extremely tragic experience and the others to write about an extremely pleasant one. In the control group, they were assigned the usual task of writing about their daily routines, only difference is this time they were not instructed to reflect upon it.
The researchers also made an interesting route, they asked the participants to express how often intrusive memories of their positive and

Get Access