Abstract
This study tested whether a 17-day randomized controlled expressive writing (EW) intervention improved cancer caregivers’ emotion regulation ability and if improved emotion regulation predicted increases in verbal person-centered message characteristics present in caregivers’ recalled support conversations with cancer survivors. Participants (N = 64) were spousal caregivers of hematopoietic stem cell transplant cancer survivors assigned to one of three writing conditions: traumatic disclosure (TD), benefit finding (BF), or a time-management control. Caregivers completed writings three times at one-week intervals, along with pre- and posttest reports of emotion regulation and written accounts of supportive conversations with spousal survivors. Both EW conditions (TD and BF) predicted reduced emotion regulation difficulty compared to the control condition. Cognitive, pronoun, and positive affect word usage within EWs did not predict emotion regulation improvement. However, use of negative emotion words predicted significant increases in emotion regulation difficulty across conditions. Verbal person-centeredness (VPC) message characteristics significantly increased from pre- to posttest for those assigned to the BF and control conditions. Despite change in VPC, emotion regulation did not mediate the relationship between condition assignment and message characteristic outcomes.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-22 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Communication Monographs |
Volume | 86 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding for this study was provided by the Peter Clarke Research Fund through the Department of Communication at the University of Washington.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © 2018 National Communication Association.
Keywords
- Cancer caregivers
- expressive writing
- social support provision
- social support quality
- verbal person-centeredness