It's not that bad: Social challenges to emotional disclosure enhance adjustment to stress

Abstract

Studies conducted in the United States (n=115) and Spain (n=146) examined how talking about an acute stressor in different social contexts influences cognitive, emotional, and physiological adjustment. In both studies, female college students viewed a video dramatizing a real-life, gang rape scene on two separate days. After the first viewing, participants were randomly assigned to one of four social conditions: no talk, talk alone about their reactions, talk to a validating confederate about their reactions, or talk to a challenging confederate about their reactions. Participants in the challenge condition showed the greatest emotional, cognitive, and physiological benefits across cultures, whereas participants in the validate and talk conditions evidenced only modest benefits. These findings suggest that the social context of disclosure has a strong influence on adjustment processes and that providing an alternative and more sanguine perspective can help individuals recover from acute stressors.

Keywords:

• Emotional expression
• Disclosure
• Trauma
• Stress

Acknowledgments

We thank George Bonanno and Tracey Revenson for their thoughtful comments on a draft of the paper. We also acknowledge the following individuals for the valuable assistance in data collection: Kamara Smith, Tracy Bach, Natalio Extremera, Asunción González, Scott Jones, Ana Masedo, Desiré Ruiz, Melissa Sloan, and Helen Wang. The four authors of this paper contributed equally to the study.