Exploring the Benefits of Psychological Displacement Diary-writing in View of Emotional Dimensions and Various Psychological Positions and Characters

Jin (2005) reported that diary-writers demonstrated unique characters on each writing subject (I, you, and he/she) and that the stretched psychological distance resulted from the change of different subjects provided short-term and long-term benefits. The present study examined the benefits before and after diary writing with Jin’s psychological displacement diary-writing paradigm (PDDP). 146 participants in total volunteered for the study. 116 were randomly assigned to the PDDP group who wrote their diaries with PDDP for ten consecutive days. The other 30 were in the control group who wrote neutral life-events for ten consecutive days. Tests of daily mood measures and feeling of life as a whole were taken before and after the ten-day period. The results showed that there was no difference between PDDP group and control group on positive indices before and after ten-day writing period. However, in the PDDP group, those who were initially low on the feeling of life as a whole showed significant increase on the positive indices after the ten-day writing period. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between the negative indices and the feeling of life as a whole in the PDDP group, meaning that the PDDP
diary-writers’ negative emotions decreased after ten-day writing and the feeling of life as a whole increased more. Moreover, the daily content analysis showed that participants in PDDP condition had more positive emotions and less negative emotions after the diary writing. Specifically, using the character of “I” can positively
predict life satisfaction, while using the character of “You” and “He/She” can predict an increase of positive emotions and a decrease of negative emotions. The discussions on the comparison between PDDP and traditional diary-writing method and the short-term and long-term benefits from PDDP were further addressed.