Writing Activities and Emotions

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.

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