Fig 1.
Illustration of the procedure of the study.
In an initial pre-writing phase, inspired by a video illustrating a teacher’s everyday working life, participants were asked to rate their expected global positive and negative affect when imagining their future professional life as a teacher, and to think about and emotionally rate the teaching-related events they are most afraid of and most looking forward to. In three subsequent writing phases taking place on three consecutive days, participants were either asked to expressively write about the teaching-related events they are most afraid of and most looking forward to (expressive writing group), or to write about a walk in a forest and a city park (control group). After each of the writing sessions, participants were asked to rate their expected fear and joy associated with the teaching-related event they are most afraid of and most looking forward to, and to rate their expected global positive and negative affect associated with their future professional life as a teacher.
Fig 2.
Effects of expressive writing on expected positive and negative affect regarding future professional life as a teacher.
The panels in (A) show the expected positive and negative affect after writing about the future teaching-related event one is most afraid of, the panels in (B) show the expected positive and negative affect after writing about the future teaching-related event one is most looking forward to. The heights of the bars show mean positive and negative affect as a function of group (expressive writing group vs. control group) and measurement point (baseline vs. day 1 vs. day 2 vs. day 3). Error bars represent standard errors.
Fig 3.
Effects of expressive writing on expected fear and joy elicited by the events one is writing about.
The panels in (A) show the intensity of the expected fear and joy, the panels in (B) show the expected controllability of the fear-inducing and joy-inducing events, the panels in (C) show the expected emotional burden (fear) and the expected positive motivational activation (joy), and the panels in (D) show the expected role the elicited emotions will play in future professional life in comparison with other expected emotions. The heights of the bars show the respective means as a function of group (expressive writing group vs. control group) and measurement point (baseline vs. day 1 vs. day 2 vs. day 3). Error bars represent standard errors.
Table 1.
Motivation to use writing exercises in the future.
Means, standard deviations, and results of separate t-test for comparisons between the expressive writing group and the control group are shown for the four individual items of the scale (scales ranging from ranging from 1 = no to 5 = yes).
Table 2.
Change in the view about one’s future professional life.
Means, standard deviations, and results of separate t-test for comparisons between the expressive writing group and the control group are shown for the seven individual items of the scale (scales ranging from ranging from 1 = no to 5 = yes).