Summary: Using EEG to measure brain activity, Michigan State University researchers discover expressive writing can help those who worry excessively to calm their fears before entering into a stressful task.
Source: Michigan State University.
Chronic worriers, take note: Simply writing about your feelings may help you perform an upcoming stressful task more efficiently, finds a Michigan State University study that measured participants’ brain activity.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, provides the first neural evidence for the benefits of expressive writing, said lead author Hans Schroder, an MSU doctoral student in psychology and a clinical intern at Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital.
“Worrying takes up cognitive resources; it’s kind of like people who struggle with worry are constantly multitasking – they are doing one task and trying to monitor and suppress their worries at the same time,” Schroder said. “Our findings show that if you get these worries out of your head through expressive writing, those cognitive resources are freed up to work toward the task you’re completing and you become more efficient.”
Schroder conducted the study at Michigan State with Jason Moser, associate professor of psychology and director of MSU’s Clinical Psychophysiology Lab, and Tim Moran, a Spartan graduate who’s now a research scientist at Emory University. The findings are published online in the journal Psychophysiology.
For the study, college students identified as chronically anxious through a validated screening measure completed a computer-based “flanker task” that measured their response accuracy and reaction times. Before the task, about half of the participants wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings about the upcoming task for eight minutes; the other half, in the control condition, wrote about what they did the day before.
While the two groups performed at about the same level for speed and accuracy, the expressive-writing group performed the flanker task more efficiently, meaning they used fewer brain resources, measured with electroencephalography, or EEG, in the process.
Moser uses a car analogy to describe the effect. “Here, worried college students who wrote about their worries were able to offload these worries and run more like a brand new Prius,” he said, “whereas the worried students who didn’t offload their worries ran more like a ’74 Impala – guzzling more brain gas to achieve the same outcomes on the task.”
While much previous research has shown that expressive writing can help individuals process past traumas or stressful events, the current study suggests the same technique can help people – especially worriers – prepare for stressful tasks in the future.
“Expressive writing makes the mind work less hard on upcoming stressful tasks, which is what worriers often get “burned out” over, their worried minds working harder and hotter,” Moser said. “This technique takes the edge off their brains so they can perform the task with a ‘cooler head.’”
Funding: Funding provided by National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
Source: Andy Henion – Michigan State University
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is adapted from the Michigan State University news release.
Original Research: Abstract for “The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry” by Hans S. Schroder, Tim P. Moran and Jason S. Moser in Psychophysiology. Published online September 8 2017 doi:10.1111/psyp.12990
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Michigan State University “Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks for Worriers.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 14 September 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/worriers-stress-expressive-writing-7487/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Michigan State University (2017, September 14). Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks for Worriers. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved September 14, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/worriers-stress-expressive-writing-7487/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Michigan State University “Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks for Worriers.” https://neurosciencenews.com/worriers-stress-expressive-writing-7487/ (accessed September 14, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry
The error-related negativity (ERN), an ERP elicited immediately after errors, is enlarged among individuals with anxiety. The relationship between anxiety and enlarged ERN has spurred interest in understanding potential therapeutic benefits of decreasing its amplitude within anxious individuals. The current study used a tailored intervention—expressive writing—in an attempt to reduce the ERN among a sample of individuals with chronic worry. Consistent with hypotheses, the ERN was reduced in the expressive writing group compared to an unrelated writing control group. Findings provide experimental support that the ERN can be reduced among anxious individuals with tailored interventions. Expressive writing may serve to “offload” worries from working memory, therefore relieving the distracting effects of worry on cognition as reflected in a decreased ERN.
“The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry” by Hans S. Schroder, Tim P. Moran and Jason S. Moser in Psychophysiology. Published online September 8 2017 doi:10.1111/psyp.12990
