Affiliation:
1. Duke University, Durham
2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Abstract
The authors investigated how word use in a stressful narrative is related to levels of grief and intrusive and avoidant thinking associated with the stressful event. A total of 218 college students who had experienced the breakup of a romantic relationship during the preceding 12 months produced a written narrative of the relationship and subsequent breakup using an expressive writing procedure. Participants used more negative emotion, cause, sensory, and first person singular words when describing the breakup in comparison to describing the period when they were still dating. In addition, greater avoidance of the breakup predicted greater use of negative emotion, first person singular and third-person pronouns, and less use of cognitive words. Conversely, levels of grief predicted less use of causal words and greater use of first person singular pronouns. The authors argue that use of cognitive words reflect an active search for meaning and understanding of the stressful event.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Sociology and Political Science,Anthropology,Language and Linguistics,Education,Social Psychology
Cited by
140 articles.
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