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Biomedical subjects

James W Pennebaker

Publications and source records attributed to James W Pennebaker.

18 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Benefits of expressive writing in lowering rumination and depressive symptoms.

Depression-vulnerable college students (with both elevated prior depressive symptoms and low current depressive symptoms) wrote on 3 consecutive days in either an expressive writing or a control condition. As predicted, participants scoring above the median on the suppression scale of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) showed significantly lower depression symptoms at the 6-month assessment when they wrote in the expressive writing versus the control condition. Additional analyses revealed that treatment benefits were mediated by changes in the Brooding but not the Reflection scale of the Ruminative Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991). A "booster" writing session predicted to enhance treatment benefits failed to have a significant effect.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics differ in their linguistic Internet self-presentation.

OBJECTIVE: Pro-anorexia has emerged as a new and emotionally charged eating disorder phenomenon. This study explored the linguistic markers of differences in Internet self-presentation of self-identified pro-anorexics who defend anorexia as a lifestyle and self-identified anorexics in recovery. METHOD: One hundred sixty-two Internet message board entries and 56 homepages originating from either pro-anorexics or recovering anorexics were analyzed for linguistic markers of emotional, cognitive, and social functioning, temporal focus, and anorexia-related psychological concerns. RESULTS: Across both text sources, pro-anorexics displayed more positive emotions, less anxiety, a lower degree of cognitive reflection, and lower levels of self-directed attention than did recovering anorexics. Pro-anorexics were also more focused on the present and less on the past. Finally, pro-anorexics were more preoccupied with eating and less with school-related issues and death. CONCLUSION: Linguistically, pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics engage in distinct psychological self-presentation styles. More research is needed to understand the clinical implications of these different linguistic styles.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Personality in its natural habitat: manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life.

To examine the expression of personality in its natural habitat, the authors tracked 96 participants over 2 days using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which samples snippets of ambient sounds in participants' immediate environments. Participants' Big Five scores were correlated with EAR-derived information on their daily social interactions, locations, activities, moods, and language use; these quotidian manifestations were generally consistent with the trait definitions and (except for Openness) often gender specific. To identify implicit folk theories about daily manifestations of personality, the authors correlated the EAR-derived information with impressions of participants based on their EAR sounds; judges' implicit folk theories were generally accurate (especially for Extraversion) and also partially gender specific. The findings point to the importance of naturalistic observation studies on how personality is expressed and perceived in the natural stream of everyday behavior.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

How do I love thee? Let me count the words: the social effects of expressive writing.

Writing about emotional experiences is associated with a host of positive outcomes. This study extended the expressive-writing paradigm to the realm of romantic relationships to examine the social effects of writing. For 3 consecutive days, one person from each of 86 dating couples either wrote about his or her deepest thoughts and feelings about the relationship or wrote about his or her daily activities. In the days before and after writing, instant messages were collected from the couples. Participants who wrote about their relationship were significantly more likely to still be dating their romantic partners 3 months later. Linguistic analyses of the instant messages revealed that participants and their partners used significantly more positive and negative emotion words in the days following the expressive-writing manipulation if the participants had written about their relationship than if they had written about their daily activities. Increases in positive emotion words partially mediated the relation between expressive writing and relationship stability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Expressive writing intervention for young adult cigarette smokers.

This investigation examined the feasibility and magnitude of the effect of a stress management intervention involving expressive writing as an adjunct to brief office smoking cessation intervention for young adults. Participants aged 18-21 years were randomized to brief office intervention (N=30) or expressive writing plus brief office intervention (N=30). Biochemically confirmed 30-day point-prevalence tobacco abstinence, smoking reduction, perceived stress, negative affect, and treatment compliance were assessed at 4, 12, and 24 weeks post randomization. The expressive writing adjunct was not found to be effective. The 30-day smoking abstinence rates were 0% versus 0% ( p=1.000) at week 4, 20% versus 3% ( p=0.103) at week 12, and 20% versus 10% ( p=0.472) at week 24 for the brief office intervention only versus expressive writing plus brief office intervention groups, respectively. Participants stated they benefited most from the support and structure associated with the brief office intervention. Enthusiasm was lacking for the expressive writing treatment adjunct.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Connecting with others in the midst of stressful upheaval on September 11, 2001.

This study was originally planned from September tenth through twelfth to assess concurrent use of three real-time data sources during a usual day. When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the plan expanded to describe 24-hour blood pressure and heart rate, natural environment word use, television viewing/radio listening, and self-reported diary feelings for six undergraduate students in the midst of stressful upheaval. Heart rate, "we" word-use and television viewing/radio listening increased over time. Higher negative and lower positive feelings/emotions occurred during morning hours on September 11. Students connected with others and shared good thoughts. Measurement with real-time data sources was informative.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed2004

Testosterone as a social inhibitor: two case studies of the effect of testosterone treatment on language.

This study aimed to correlate testosterone levels with natural written language in 2 people undergoing testosterone therapy. Two participants, a man receiving treatment for loss of upper-body strength and a female-to-male transgendered individual, supplied records of injections over 1-2 years along with e-mails or journal entries as writing samples. Results showed that higher testosterone levels correlated with reduced use of words related to social connections. Language relating to anger, sexuality, and achievement was unrelated to testosterone levels. It appears that testosterone steers attention away from social connections but not necessarily toward concerns with aggression or sexual activity.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001.

The diaries of 1,084 U.S. users of an on-line journaling service were downloaded for a period of 4 months spanning the 2 months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. Linguistic analyses of the journal entries revealed pronounced psychological changes in response to the attacks. In the short term, participants expressed more negative emotions, were more cognitively and socially engaged, and wrote with greater psychological distance. After 2 weeks, their moods and social referencing returned to baseline, and their use of cognitive-analytic words dropped below baseline. Over the next 6 weeks, social referencing decreased, and psychological distancing remained elevated relative to baseline. Although the effects were generally stronger for individuals highly preoccupied with September 11, even participants who hardly wrote about the events showed comparable language changes. This study bypasses many of the methodological obstacles of trauma research and provides a fine-grained analysis of the time line of human coping with upheaval.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

The sounds of social life: a psychometric analysis of students' daily social environments and natural conversations.

The natural conversations and social environments of 52 undergraduates were tracked across two 2-day periods separated by 4 weeks using a computerized tape recorder (the Electronically Activated Recorder [EAR]). The EAR was programmed to record 30-s snippets of ambient sounds approximately every 12 min during participants' waking hours. Students' social environments and use of language in their natural conversations were mapped in terms of base rates and temporal stability. The degree of cross-context consistency and between-speaker synchrony in language use was assessed. Students' social worlds as well as their everyday language were highly consistent across time and context. The study sheds light on a methodological blind spot--the sampling of naturalistic social information from an unobtrusive observer's perspective.

Acoustics↗
PubMed2003

Words of wisdom: language use over the life span.

Two projects explored the links between language use and aging. In the first project, written or spoken text samples from disclosure studies from over 3,000 research participants from 45 different studies representing 21 laboratories in 3 countries were analyzed to determine how people change in their use of 14 text dimensions as a function of age. A separate project analyzed the collected works of 10 well-known novelists, playwrights, and poets who lived over the last 500 years. Both projects found that with increasing age, individuals use more positive and fewer negative affect words, use fewer self-references, use more future-tense and fewer past-tense verbs, and demonstrate a general pattern of increasing cognitive complexity. Implications for using language as a marker of personality among current and historical texts are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

The social dynamics of a cultural upheaval: social interactions surrounding September 11, 2001.

Using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a new methodology for sampling behavioral data in naturalistic settings, we tracked the social lives of 11 people by recording 30-s snippets of ambient sounds in their environment approximately every 12 min. Participants wore the EAR continuously for 10 days from September 11, 2001. Pre-September 11 baseline data were available for all participants. Analyses of the coded sound information showed that although participants did not change in their overall amount of interactions, they gradually shifted from group conversations to dyadic interactions. Exploratory analyses revealed that a relative increase in dyadic interactions over the first 10 days after September 11 was marginally related to better psychological adjustment at follow-up. The findings have relevance for the understanding of stress and affiliation and normal psychological reactions to emergencies.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

The secret life of pronouns: flexibility in writing style and physical health.

Numerous disclosure studies have demonstrated that individuals randomly assigned to write about emotional topics evidence improved physical health compared with those who write about superficial topics. The writing samples from three previously published studies of 74 first-year students, 50 upper-division students, and 59 maximum-security prisoners were reanalyzed using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to explore possible relationships of writing content and style to changes in frequency of physician visits following the disclosure intervention. LSA revealed that flexibility in the use of common words-particularly personal pronouns--when writing about traumatic memories was related to positive health outcomes. The findings point to the importance of the role of discussing the self and social relationships in writing and, at the same time, to the remarkable potential of techniques such as LSA.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Lying words: predicting deception from linguistic styles.

Telling lies often requires creating a story about an experience or attitude that does not exist. As a result, false stories may be qualitatively different from true stories. The current project investigated the features of linguistic style that distinguish between true and false stories. In an analysis of five independent samples, a computer-based text analysis program correctly classified liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% when the topic was constant and a rate of 61% overall. Compared to truth-tellers, liars showed lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Psychological aspects of natural language. use: our words, our selves.

The words people use in their daily lives can reveal important aspects of their social and psychological worlds. With advances in computer technology, text analysis allows researchers to reliably and quickly assess features of what people say as well as subtleties in their linguistic styles. Following a brief review of several text analysis programs, we summarize some of the evidence that links natural word use to personality, social and situational fluctuations, and psychological interventions. Of particular interest are findings that point to the psychological value of studying particles-parts of speech that include pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctives, and auxiliary verbs. Particles, which serve as the glue that holds nouns and regular verbs together, can serve as markers of emotional state, social identity, and cognitive styles.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2002

Expressing health experience through embodied language.

PURPOSE: To describe embodied language for Japanese elders who suffered a stroke or cardiac disease within the previous year. Embodied language is the overlap of feeling and temporal word use with blood pressure during descriptions of health experience. DESIGN: Exploratory. METHODS: Blood pressure and word use were recorded simultaneously when 17 cardiac and 20 stroke participants described their health experiences for 4 minutes. Blood pressure was measured using a tonometric monitor and word use was measured using linguistic analysis software. Descriptive and nonparametric statistics were used. FINDINGS: Participants with strokes retained higher blood pressure after talking than did cardiac participants. The two groups showed contrasting relationships between word use and blood pressure, particularly for temporal words. CONCLUSIONS: This collaborative research between Japanese and American colleagues was a step toward deciphering shared values, which are important to understanding health for people who have lived through life-changing illness events.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Expressive disclosure and health outcomes in a prostate cancer population.

OBJECTIVE: This pilot study explored the feasibility and the efficacy of a brief, well-defined psychosocial intervention (expressive disclosure) in improving behavioral, medical, immunological, and emotional health outcomes in men with diagnosed prostate cancer. METHOD: Thirty prostate cancer patients receiving outpatient oncology care were randomized into experimental (disclosure) and control (non-disclosure) groups. All had been previously treated by surgery or radiation within the last 4 years and were being monitored without further intervention for change in PSA levels. Psychological and physical health surveys were administered and peripheral blood for PSA levels and immune assays was obtained upon study enrollment and again at 3 and 6 months post enrollment. Multivariate analyses were used to examine how the expressive disclosure impacted the hypothesized domains of functioning: physical and psychological symptoms; health care utilization; and immunocompetence. RESULTS: Compared to controls, patients in the expressive disclosure condition showed improvements in the domains of physical symptoms and health care utilization, but not in psychological variables nor in disease relevant aspects of immunocompetence. CONCLUSIONS: Study results support the feasibility of an expressive disclosure intervention for men with prostate cancer. The intervention was well accepted by this population, and participation/adherence was quite high. Results provide only limited support for the hypothesis that a written emotional disclosure task can positively impact health outcomes in a cancer population. However, this pilot study may have lacked adequate power to detect possible intervention benefits. Further studies with larger samples are needed to better assess the intervention's impact on psychological well-being and immunocompetence.

Affect↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Effect of written emotional expression on immune function in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection: a randomized trial.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether writing about emotional topics compared with writing about neutral topics could affect CD4+ lymphocyte count and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral load among HIV-infected patients. METHODS: Thirty-seven HIV-infected patients were randomly allocated to 2 writing conditions focusing on emotional or control topics. Participants wrote for 4 days, 30 minutes per day. The CD4+ lymphocyte count and HIV viral load were measured at baseline and at 2 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after writing. RESULTS: The emotional writing participants rated their essays as more personal, valuable, and emotional than those in the control condition. Relative to the drop in HIV viral load, CD4+ lymphocyte counts increased after the intervention for participants in the emotional writing condition compared with control writing participants. CONCLUSIONS: The results are consistent with those of previous studies using emotional writing in other patient groups. Based on the self-reports of the value of writing and the preliminary laboratory findings, the results suggest that emotional writing may provide benefit for patients with HIV infection.

Adult↗