Expressive Writing to Cope with Hate Speech: Assessing Psychobiological Stress Recovery and Forgiveness Promotion for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Queer Victims of Hate Speech

Abstract

This study examined whether expressive writing could help lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGBQ) hate speech victims increase forgiveness for offenders, and accelerate cortisol recovery following a discussion task in which they recalled the details of their experiences. Participants (N = 46) were assigned to a benefit‐finding, traumatic disclosure writing, or control condition. The findings indicate that benefit‐finding promoted forgiveness and reduced cortisol values, whereas traumatic disclosure writing only accelerated cortisol recovery. Analyses of the linguistic features of victims' narratives revealed that the amount of emotion‐related words related to cortisol recovery, whereas the greater use of cognitive words was related with forgiveness. Implications for theory, methodological comparison, and future research are discussed.

Forgiveness and cardiovascular functioning in married couples.

“…Using a nationally representative data set, Toussaint, Owen, and Cheadle (2012) found that forgiveness predicted mortality, suggesting that failure to forgive may be life threatening. Although this finding is consistent with data showing that forgiveness is associated with cardiac risk in both community and patient populations (Friedberg, Suchday, & Srinivas, 2009;Toussaint & Cheadle, 2009), relatively few studies have investigated the physiology underlying forgiveness (e.g., Crowley, 2014; see Worthington & Sotoohi, 2010 for a review). The need to investigate the role of forgiveness in health outcomes is even more apparent in the growing literature on forgiveness in families (see Fincham, in press).…”

Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy for Trauma and Meaning Making Among Ethnically Diverse Individuals in the United States

“…Research suggests that forgiveness predicts posttraumatic growth in individuals who have experienced a range of significant interpersonal offenses (Heintzelman, Murdock, Krycak, & Seay, 2014;Schultz, Tallman, & Altmaier, 2010;Wusik, Smith, Jones, & Hughes, 2015). Experimental evidence shows that writing about the benefits of an interpersonal offense or benefits of forgiveness (i.e., identifying posttraumatic growth) causes increases in forgiveness (Crowley, 2014;McCullough, Root, & Cohen, 2006). In support of the conceptual relationship described earlier, cognitive processing played an important role in the effects of the benefit-finding conditions on forgiveness in both these studies.…”

“Connection is the antidote”: Psychological distress, emotional processing, and virtual community building among LGBTQ students after the Orlando shooting.

“…Finally, this case study focused on individuals' immediate postevent appraisal of and reaction to the Orlando shooting. Despite the difficulty of predicting such anti-LGBTQ incidents, future research may benefit from capturing preevent levels of emotional distress in order to corroborate the direction of influence and identify resiliency factors (Crowley, 2014). Also, tracking emotional distress over time (e.g., daily diary studies) may provide a more complete picture of the rise and fall of stress in the aftermath of learning of an act of anti-LGBTQ hate.…”

“…The violent shooting at Pulse nightclub was distressing to many individuals and social demographics, including LGBTQ people (Haider, 2016; Torres, 2016). Scholars have called for increased research on how sexual minorities cope with incidents of hate and discrimination (Crowley, 2014; Institute of Medicine, 2011). However, because community-based hate crimes are spontaneous, few investigations capture immediate data concerning how LGBTQ individuals appraise, experience, and cope with such tragedies.…”