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theses

While positive psychology has suggested that focusing on the positive aspects of past experiences or current situations can result in greater success, some research has suggested that focusing on the negative can be a good thing. Specifically, writing about past traumas or current anxieties has been shown to result in improved performance and overall wellbeing; more recently, reflecting on past failures has been shown to increase self-reported persistence and performance on a task requiring persistence. Yet, it is unknown why reflecting on such strong negative experiences results in such positive outcomes, as there has been a lack of empirical evidence for many proposed explanations. Furthermore, it is imperative to examine the neural and physiological mechanisms of how expressive writing may lead to performance improvements in a variety of circumstances—including in the presence of a stressor or other challenging task—in order to shed light on the best way to utilize expressive writing in an educational or treatment setting. In 5 experiments, I examine whether reflecting on a past failure improves performance by altering physiological stress, modifying feedback processing, increasing attention, or affecting motivation, or some combination of these processes. The research aims to reveal more about the mechanisms of how expressive writing—specifically, writing about failures—leads to performance improvements.

ETD_8962

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Brynne C. DiMenichi

doi:10.7282/T35Q50HH

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.