The Effects of Interventions Aiming at Optimizing Expectations and Inducing Positive Emotions After an Acute Stressor

Philipps University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Healthy Participants

Treatments: Behavioral: Writing task

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02848014

2016-08k

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the study is to determine whether a short psychological intervention aiming at optimizing expectations is able to foster positive emotions and whether an intervention inducing positive emotions is able improve participants' expectations. Furthermore, the investigators will examine whether both interventions are effective in buffering the stress response after an acute stressor in a healthy sample compared to a control condition.

Enrollment: 74 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• fluent in German language

Exclusion criteria

• chronic disease
• mental disease
• the evening before the day of the experiment until end of the experiment (the next day): caffeine, alcohol, intensive physical exercise, chewing gum
• acute hay fever
• current intake of psychotropic medication

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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74 participants in 3 patient groups

Expectation

Experimental group

Description:

Participants are asked to think and write about ways how they can positively influence/control the stress during stress induction. They also can think of strategies they used in their past. The purpose of this arm is to improve participants' personal control expectations.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Writing task

Emotion

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in this group are asked to write a gratitude-letter to a person they want to thank. The purpose of this arm is to foster positive emotions.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Writing task

Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants in this group are asked to do a neutral writing task. The task is to write a protocol of yesterday's to-dos.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Writing task