Expressive Writing and Self-Disclosure as a Brief Intervention to Improve Body Satisfaction, Disordered Eating Attitudes, and Fear of Negative Appearance Evaluation in College Students

Abstract

Prior research indicates that 64-71% of college students experience body dissatisfaction and 25-28% engage in disordered eating behaviors (Jiménez-Limas et al., 2022; Pinto et al., 2019). The present study set out to determine whether expressive writing and self-disclosure as a combined brief intervention can be effective in reducing body dissatisfaction, disordered eating attitudes, and fear of negative appearance evaluation in college students. A sample of 230 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 were brought into the lab and completed three sessions of a 20-minute expressive writing exercise on body dissatisfaction, each one day apart, with three conditions: a control condition, an expressive writing condition with self-disclosure, and an expressive writing condition without self-disclosure. Baseline, immediate-post intervention, and two-week follow-up measures were given in Qualtrics. Results indicated that the combined expressive writing conditions were not more effective than the control in reducing any of the outcomes of interest, but the self-disclosure experimental condition was significantly more effective than the non-self-disclosure experimental condition in reducing body dissatisfaction, disordered eating attitudes, and fear of negative appearance evaluation. Other exploratory tests shed light on the relationship between these body-image related outcomes, and how they are related to social anxiety and avoidance.