Talk To Me

Jamie Pennebaker, of Southern Methodist University1 has published numerous studies over the past decade exploring the benefits of confiding in others. A clear picture has emerged: Confession is good for mind, body, and probably, soul.

Pennebaker and his colleagues Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Ronald Glaser (1988) asked students to write about either traumatic events in their lives (preferably, stressors that they had not previously discussed with others) or trivial topics for four consecutive days. Prior to the experiment the research participants provided self-reports of their mood, and blood pressure, heart rate, and immunological assays were also collected. These same dependent measures were collected after the writing project, and the assays were also collected 6 weeks after the experiment. The researchers found that the experimental group indeed wrote about rather consequential topics, although they did not enjoy immediate benefits of confession; after writing these participants reported feeling worse than did the control group. However, longer-term benefits were noted. Although measures of autonomic arousal did not distinguish the two groups, students who had confided made fewer subsequent visits to the campus health center and had better immunological functioning than did members of the control group. Moreover, greater improvement in immunological functioning was found for those participants who wrote about previously undisclosed events rather than stressful events that had previously been discussed with others.

Similar benefits were enjoyed by spouses of suicide and accidental-death victims. Pennebaker and Robin O'Heeron (1984) asked nineteen spouses to complete surveys regarding their health and coping one year after their partners' deaths. Results showed that the more these volunteers had discussed their spouse's death with friends and loved ones, and the less they had ruminated on the tragic events, the fewer the health problems they reported. Importantly, this effect did not depend on the number of friends the spouses reported having. Rather than being a function of the availability of social support, these benefits seem to be a function of confession.

What produces these benefits? Inhibition is hard work. The act of not confiding or ruminating on an aversive event is physiologically taxing (and mentally stressful; see "The Psychology of Mental Control" in Chapter 8 of this manual). Over time, the cumulative stress placed on the body increases the long-term probability of stress-related illness. Confiding, talking, and writing about an event, on the other hand, provides meaning and a new understanding. By organizing and assimilating the experience, a person may become habituated to the event and gradually dull the sharp edges of the experience; over time the information can be cognitively consolidated much like other, less traumatic memories. Language itself may help in this regard. When called upon to summarize a traumatic event in words, language forces a certain structure; the relatively slow process of writing, sequencing and temporal organization. What were previously harrowing images are often reduced to a comparatively small set of words. Finally, confession helps to externalize an event. By writing in a diary or confiding to a friend we are able to distance ourselves somewhat from a traumatic event. Once the memory of an event has been committed to paper there is less need to mentally rehearse the event, and thus it is robbed of some of its power to torment us.

References

Pennebaker, J. W. (1990). Opening up: The heallng power of confiding in others. New York: Morrow.

Pennebaker. J. W., & 0'Heeron, R. c. (1984). Confiding in others and illness rate among spouses of suicide and accidental-death victims. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93, 473-476.

Pennebaker, j. w., Hughes, c. F., & O'Heeron, R. c. (1987). The psychophysiology of confession: Linking Inhibitory and psychosomatic processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52,781-793.

CHAPTER NINE - HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

From the presentation on Stress and Human Spirituality by David Miank, PhD, of the Interfaith Office in Union Plaza (Bldg. 26) at Cal Poly Pomona.

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Go to Jim Grizzell's Web Page at Cal Poly Pomona

April 1999