The Health Benefits of Writing about Life Goals
Abstract
In a variation on Pennebaker’s writing paradigm, a sample of 81 undergraduates wrote about one of four topics for 20 minutes each day for 4 consecutive days. Participants were randomly assigned to write about their most traumatic life event, their best possible future self, both of these topics, or a nonemotional control topic. Mood was measured before and after writing and health center data for illness were obtained with participant consent. Three weeks later, measures of subjective well-being were obtained. Writing about life goals was significantly less upsetting than writing about trauma and was associated with a significant increase in subjective well-being. Five months after writing, a significant interaction emerged such that writing about trauma, one’s best possible self, or both were associated with decreased illness compared with controls. Results indicate that writing about self-regulatory topics can be associated with the same health benefits as writing about trauma.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Activities such as expressing gratitude, counting blessings, and writing about life goals have positive effects on one's well-being.
“Examples are activities such as expressing gratitude (Algoe 2008), counting your blessings (Froh et al. 2008), and writing about life goals (King 2001) that have indeed been found to have positive effects on one ' s well-being.”
From The role of passion in sustainable psychological well-being (2012) · cites this paper as King 2001
PP exercises have led to increased optimism and outcome expectancy, confidence and self-efficacy, and greater perceived social support and interpersonal connectedness.
“PP exercises have led to increased optimism and outcome expectancy [124, 125], confidence and self-efficacy [126], and greater perceived social support and interpersonal connectedness (pathway A1) [127, 128].”
From Positive Psychological Interventions for Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: Rationale, Theoretical Model, and Intervention Development (2015) · cites this paper as [124]
PP has established benefits on mood, resilience, well-being, and optimism.
“Regarding direct effects of PP on activity, the established benefits of PP on mood, resilience, well-being, and optimism (pathway B1) [41, 54, 124, 125] are associated with increased physical activity (pathway B2) [48, 88, 123, 131, 132].”
From Positive Psychological Interventions for Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: Rationale, Theoretical Model, and Intervention Development (2015) · cites this paper as [124]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 45 · Cited by 795
- Authors
- King, L. A.
- Affiliations
- Southern Methodist University (US)
- Corresponding author
- King, Laura A.
- ORCID
- King, Laura A.
- Venue
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2001-07
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 798-807
- ISSN
- 0146-1672 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7433
- OpenAlex
- W2158489986
- Cited by
- 795
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 31 · 2025: 49 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 48 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 46 · 2017: 39 · 2016: 38 · 2015: 46 · 2014: 49 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 33
- FWCI
- 10.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Keywords
- expressive writing, life goals, best possible self, traumatic life events, subjective well-being, mood, illness, self-regulation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
