Self-Administered Optimism Training: Mechanisms of Change in a Minimally Supervised Psychoeducational Intervention

Abstract

Pessimistic explanatory style is a robust predictor of future depressive symptoms. There were 112 college students with a pessimistic ejqilanatory style identified from a larger screening sample. Participants were randomly assigned to Seif-Administered Optimism Training or a no-treatment control group. Participants assigned to SOT received 10 minutes of instruction regarding self-moni tor ing of how they assigned causes to events in their lives and "brainstorming" alternate causes, and then sent off to record daily diaries that captured this information every day for 28 days. The SOT participants demonstrated significant drops in pessimism in three separate but related assessments. Further, findings indicated a significant correlation between cognitive change and depression symptom change for the SOT group but not the control group. Although preliminary in nature, findings from the current study demonstrate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an inexpensive, prophylactic treatment for depression that utilizes a minimum of therapist contact

Become more optimistic by imagining a best possible self: Effects of a two week intervention

“…This necessary development in research plus the positive contributions optimism may entail in the clinical setting, indicates the relevance of developing and testing optimism increasing interventions. Previous optimism interventions have mainly focused on changing explanatory style of past events and not directly on changing future expectancies (Fresco, Moore, Walt, & Craighead, 2009;Riskind, Sarampote, & Mercier, 1996;Ruthig, Perry, Hall, & Hladkyj, 2004;Seligman, 1998). Only recently have researchers begun to search for an intervention tool that directly targets optimism-related cognitions (Fosnaugh, Geers, & Wellman;Peters, Flink, Boersma, & Linton, 2010).…”

Positive Psychological Capital Development: A Field Study by the Solomon Four Group Design

“…Additionally studies on the subject of training and development rarely targeted at the workplace (exp. Gist, Stevens, & Bavetta, 1991;Holdnak, Clemons, & Bushardt, 1990) and generally focus on long term applications (Kossek, Roberts, Fisher, & Demarr, 1998;Fresco, Moore, Walt, & Craighead, 2009) rather than micro interventions such as 2-hour implementations.…”

Athlete Social Support, Negative Social Interactions, and Psychological Health across a Competitive Sport Season

“…Characterized as a marker of psychological illbeing for athletes, burnout is a significant concern of sport psychologists, coaches, and physicians (Dale & Weinberg, 1990;Eklund & Cresswell, 2007;Mann, Grana, Indelicato, O'Neill, & George, 2007). Athlete burnout is a maladaptive cognitive-affective syndrome characterized by perceptions of emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, and sport devaluation (Raedeke, 1997) and is associated with variables representing sport fatigue and psychological unrest (e.g., low sport motivation, anxiety, mood disturbance, depression; Eklund & Cresswell, 2007;Goodger, Gorely, Lavallee, & Harwood, 2007).…”

“…Athlete burnout is a maladaptive cognitive-affective syndrome characterized by perceptions of emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, and sport devaluation (Raedeke, 1997) and is associated with variables representing sport fatigue and psychological unrest (e.g., low sport motivation, anxiety, mood disturbance, depression; Eklund & Cresswell, 2007;Goodger, Gorely, Lavallee, & Harwood, 2007). Moreover, in workers, burnout has been shown to positively associate with trait anger, a variable reflecting dispositional negative affect (Baruch-Feldman, Brondolo, Ben-Dayan, & Schwartz, 2002).…”