Williamson Timothy J, Stanton Annette L, Austin Jane E, Valdimarsdottir Heiddis B, Wu Lisa M, Krull Jennifer L, Rini Christine M
Department of Psychology, University of California, 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Ann Behav Med. 2017 Oct;51(5):683-693. doi: 10.1007/s12160-017-9892-2.
A randomized experiment by Rini et al. (Health Psychol. 33(12):1541-1551, 2014) demonstrated that expressive helping, which involves three expressive writing sessions regarding hematopoietic stem cell transplant, followed by one writing session directed toward helping other stem cell transplant recipients, reduced psychological distress and bothersome physical symptoms among stem cell transplant recipients with elevated survivorship problems, relative to a neutral writing control condition.
The current study evaluated whether word use reflective of emotional expression, cognitive processing, and change in perspective mediates the effects of expressive helping.
The essays of 67 stem cell transplant recipients with high survivorship problems were analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Multiple mediation modeling was used to test the hypothesized mechanisms of expressive helping on distress and bothersome physical symptoms.
Relative to the control condition, expressive helping produced significant reductions in psychological distress and marginal reductions in physical symptom bother in the analyzed subset of participants from the parent study. Results indicated that positive emotion word use significantly mediated effects of expressive helping on reduced distress, but only for participants who used average (compared to above or below average) rates of negative emotion words. Cognitive processing and change in perspective did not significantly mediate benefits of expressive helping.
Expressive helping carried its positive effects on distress through participants' higher expression of positive emotions when coupled with moderate rates of negative emotions. Findings highlight the benefit of expressing both positive and negative emotions in stressful situations.
里尼等人（《健康心理学》，2014年，第33卷第12期，第1541 - 1551页）进行的一项随机实验表明，表达性帮助（包括关于造血干细胞移植的三次表达性写作，随后是一次针对帮助其他干细胞移植受者的写作）相对于中性写作对照条件，可减轻有较高生存问题的干细胞移植受者的心理困扰和令人烦恼的身体症状。
本研究评估反映情绪表达、认知加工和视角变化的词汇使用是否介导了表达性帮助的效果。
对67名有高生存问题的干细胞移植受者的文章进行语言查询与字数统计分析。采用多重中介模型来检验表达性帮助对困扰和令人烦恼的身体症状的假设机制。
相对于对照条件，在母研究分析的参与者子集中，表达性帮助显著减轻了心理困扰，并使身体症状困扰略有减轻。结果表明，积极情绪词汇的使用显著介导了表达性帮助对减轻困扰的影响，但仅适用于使用负面情绪词汇比率处于平均水平（与高于或低于平均水平相比）的参与者。认知加工和视角变化并未显著介导表达性帮助带来的益处。
当与适度的负面情绪相结合时，如果参与者更多地表达积极情绪，表达性帮助就能对困扰产生积极影响。研究结果凸显了在压力情境下表达积极和消极情绪的益处。
