EMOTIONAL DISCLOSURE THROUGH WRITING OR SPEAKING MODULATES LATENT EPSTEIN-BARR-VIRUS ANTIBODY-TITERS

Healthy Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) seropositive undergraduates (N = 57) completed a personality inventory, provided blood samples, and were ra ndomly assigned to write or talk about stressful events, or to write a bout trivial events, during three weekly 20-min sessions, after which they provided a final blood sample. Individuals assigned to the verbal /stressful condition had significantly lower EBV antibody titers (sugg esting better cellular immune control over the latent virus) after the intervention than those in the written/stressful group. who had signi ficantly lower values than those in the written/trivial control group. Subjects assigned to the written/stressful condition expressed more n egative emotional words than the verbal/stressful and control groups a nd more positive emotional words than the verbal/stressful group at ea ch time point. The verbal/stressful group expressed more negative emot ional words compared with the control group at baseline. Content analy sis indicated that the verbal/stressful group achieved the greatest im provements in cognitive change, self-esteem, and adaptive coping strat egies.