Positive Expressive Writing as a Stress Management Strategy for Japanese Students: Willingness to Engage in Expressive Writing

ABSTRACT Positive expressive writing may improve willingness to engage in expressive writing. An individual, three-day, homework-style experiment was conducted with 42 Japanese undergraduate students who completed a writing task about their feelings regarding a stressful experience. Participants were assigned sequentially to positive, negative, or standard prompt groups. ANOVAs were performed to compare students’ willingness to engage in expressive writing across groups and revealed a relative increase in the positive prompt group’s willingness from baseline to follow-up. In that group, students’ willingness significantly increased from pre-session to post-session. The positive prompt helped maintain higher levels of continued expressive writing and promoted participants’ willingness to engage in expressive writing, causing fewer interruptions during writing sessions. Expressive writing may be an early stress intervention strategy.