| This research explored the question of whether an imaginary trauma can be used in place of a true traumatic event in an expressive writing task (Pennebaker and Beall, 1986) and provide similar health benefits. In addition, this study explored whether habituation occurs over the course of the three writing sessions for the imaginary trauma writers. The study used an undergraduate population (n = 51), largely female and diverse in ethnicity. The Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (PILL) and the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) were utilized to quantify the degree of illness in the sample before and after the experiment and to identify the pattern of arousal/distress across the course of the study, respectively. Results yielded no evidence of health benefit from the imaginary trauma writing task and mixed evidence for the mechanism of habituation. The results are inconclusive but suggest that the imaginary trauma writing task requires a change in its formulation to produce the target effects. |
