2020 Volume 68 Issue 1 Pages 1-10
Though defensive pessimists are less satisfied with their performance and rate themselves as being in greater need for improvement, they attend to and prepare for anxiety-provoking events strategically, with the result that their actual performance is not worse than people who have a more optimistic strategy (Spencer & Norem, 1996). The present study examined benefits of expressive writing on the performance of a fine motor skills task. The expressive writing tasks were tailored for the different cognitive strategies of defensive pessimists (coping writing) and strategic optimists (mastery writing). Participants in the study, 97 undergraduate students, were assigned to one of the following conditions: coping writing, mastery writing, or control writing. After writing, they took a test of fine motor skills (darts performance). The prediction was confirmed that the defensive pessimists in the coping writing condition who wrote about coping with anxiety-provoking events would show an improvement in their performance on the darts task, compared to the darts performance of the defensive pessimists in the mastery writing and control writing conditions. On the other hand, no effect of writing condition was observed in the darts performance of the strategic optimists. The moderating role of cognitive strategies on benefits of expressive writing, and the importance of tailored writing, were discussed.
