NCT04539756

Writing Activities and Emotions

Does an Online Two-week Positive Psychological Intervention Improve Positive Affect in Young Adults?

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 250 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The current study aims to test whether an online two-week positive psychological intervention can increase positive affect in college students. Participants will be recruited from the University of Pittsburgh undergraduate subject pool. Students will be ineligible if they are under the age of 18; currently prescribed medications for cardiac arrythmias; have a history of heart surgery, heart attack, or stroke; are currently pregnant; or currently have symptoms consistent with COVID-19. This study includes an active control arm and an intervention arm. Both arms will be required to complete writing activities every other day for two weeks. Participants in the control arm will list their daily activities, while participants in the intervention arm will complete various positive psychology activities. Questionnaires assessing mood, emotional well-being, social functioning and a few health behaviors will be administered pre- and post-intervention. The investigators aim to recruit 250 undergraduate students with the hope that at least 50 participants per group will complete the entire study.

Conditions

• Healthy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	positive psychological intervention	Participants will be asked to complete writing activities every other day. They will choose which activity they would like to complete each day, from a menu of six different activities. Each activity is a different positive psychology exercise.
BEHAVIORAL	Active control condition	Participants will be asked to complete the same writing activity each day, which will ask them to list their daily activities. Participants will be encouraged to process their daily activities superficially by the receiving the following instructions: (1) list each activity in brief, incomplete sentences, (2) document only facts about performing the activities, and (3) to not provide any information about emotional responses to performing the activities. By following these instructions, participants are presumably deriving less meaning from their activities, which may minimize gains in positive affect in the active control condition

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-09-08
• Primary completion: 2020-11-20
• Completion: 2020-11-20
• First posted: 2020-09-07
• Last updated: 2021-07-02

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States