Month: April 2025

I began working on a post about the similarities of expressive writing and writing to learn some days ago. In the meantime, the stock market and the general attitude of the country took a decided nosedive. I could not ignore a possible interaction between this dramatic negative mood swing and the original focus of expressive writing so I will just recommend writing to those struggling to deal with our present political crisis and encourage you to read the rest of the post to learn why.

Dr. Jamie Pennebaker found a use for writing that produces both consequential and fairly consistent results. His results relate to clinical psychology which is somewhat outside my own background as an educational psychologist, but I at least can appreciate the impact of an intervention that can be classified as both consequential and fairly consistent as such outcomes are less common than others might imagine when it comes to impacting human behavior. Pennebaker asked college students to think of a traumatic experience from their own lives. His instructions – think about your feelings and emotions related to this experience. I want you to write about this experience for 15 minutes. I will have you do this for three straight days. What you write will be confidential – no one will read what you write. A control group (randomly assigned) was asked to write about their daily routine for the same periods of time. The researchers conducting this study then followed the number of student visits to student health in the following months and found that what Pennebaker eventually described as the expressive writing group had significantly fewer visits. Writing appeared to have an impact on mental health.

I know this seems on the level of magic or weird as I can imagine many reasons this connection might not materialize. Even if the treatment had an immediate consequence on the “problem” why would it follow that the results would be related to medical issues? What if the “problem” was an issue they experienced in their childhood? Why would such a random task during their college days have an impact?

I can’t answer these questions, but hundreds of follow-up studies have produced related results. Pennebaker and other researchers found that expressive writing could enhance immune function, lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension, and even decrease doctor visits. These benefits were observed across various studies involving participants with both physical illnesses (e.g., arthritis, asthma) and mental health challenges. There has to be something to the benefits of writing.

I first encountered the concept of expressive writing not through my prior work as a psychologist, but because of an interest in the benefits of keeping a notebook. Pennebaker’s work was described in one chapter of Allen’s book “The notebook: A history of thinking on paper”. Once I became interested, I conducted literature searches that might point to an explanation for what about writing might produce this impact. Meta-analytical papers are relevant to the goal of why things work as they do because such papers examine many studies on a given topic, successful and successful experiments, and attempt from this variety of studies to determine what are the factors that contribute to successes and failures. The logic in this approach is that the differences are key to understanding why a technique might be successful and what are the boundary conditions. 

The following are the suggested explanations for the benefits of writing.

1. Catharsis without social risk. You have likely heard of an LBGTQ+ individual “coming out”. This decision when public provides a release from feelings that you have to hide who you are and what you feel. Perhaps expressive writing works in a similar way even though writing is private. This is my example of how catharsis works and I hope this comparison is appropriate.
2. Cognitive-processing theory. Writing requires concreteness as the abstract and fuzzy ideas in your mind must be made concrete as the ideas are put down on paper. Pennebaker built a digital tool for identifying keywords and concepts in what was written (not in the original study promising anonymity). Those participants with more positive outcomes made greater use of causation words (e.g., because, cause, effect) and insight words (e.g., consider, know) in the content they produced. Perhaps writing helps work out why something happened to you and how significant long term consequences might actually be.
3. Self-regulation theory. Being able to label stressors and challenges may give the writer a greater sense of understanding and control reducing negative affect leading to greater confidence in better outcomes in the future.

Generative processing as a general explanation for the benefits of writing

I have tried to translate some of these clinical concepts into something more familiar to me. I see similarities in learning and study techniques described as generative learning. In past posts on generative activities, I have explained that the use of a self-imposed or assigned external task encourages productive mental activities. In other words, a learner has the capacity to apply process productively, but for one reason or another does not. The external task (e.g., answering questions, writing summaries, explaining to a peer) encourages these productive thinking behaviors in order to perform the external task and better understanding and retention is produced as a consequence. The cognitive processing of emotional issues may similarly be manipulated by a concrete external task (i.e., expressive writing). This way of thinking seems to fit with the theoretical proposals in the meta-analyses I listed and I think offers a tangible approach that is easier to understand and communicate.

I can’t help thinking about AI as I write this post. How might one encourage tangible “externalization” and processing of life experiences? You may have heard of ELIZA which while not AI could carry on a conversation of a sort through the use of some clever programming that used language patterns built on the input from a user to generate responses and encourage further input on their part. The Wikipedia link in the previous sentence offers more detailed information. Current large language models can now do far more. AI therapy exists and is controversial, but how different is chatting with CHATGPT and writing something you know no one will read? 

What about Trump and the stock market? I will write something and put it on Facebook and I do hope someone reads it. 

Sources:

Allen, R. (2024). The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. Biblioasis. (Chapter 24)

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: a meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 132(6), 823-865.

Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. (2016). Eight Ways to Promote Generative Learning. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 717-741.

Guo, L. (2023).  The delayed, durable effect of expressive writing on depression, anxiety and stress: A meta-analytic review of studies with long-term follow-ups. British Journal of Clinical Psychology,  62,  272–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12408

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162-166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.