Increasing ethnic identity and reducing psychological symptoms through expressive writing

Expressive writing has been shown to improve physical and psychological health among clinical and non-clinical populations in a variety of settings. The expressive writing paradigm has been modified to address a wide range of clinical issues and the current study demonstrates that it can be modified to examine ethnic identity among biracial American and Asian American populations. This study adopted an expressive writing paradigm in order to experimentally increase ethnic identity among biracial American and Asian American populations in order to reduce psychological symptoms experienced by ethnic minorities. Participants in the expressive writing experimental condition were instructed to write about positive experiences related to their ethnicity. Participants in the control condition were instructed to write about a neutral topic, such as what they did that day. The results of the study found that biracial Americans and Asian Americans in the experimental condition reported higher levels of ethnic identity compared to the control condition following the writing intervention and at two week follow-up. Biracial Americans in the experimental condition had lower levels of anxiety compared to biracial Americans in the control condition; however, the writing intervention did not have the same effect for Asian Americans. There was a significant difference in level of negative affect between writing conditions. Biracial Americans and Asian Americans in the experimental condition had lower levels of negative affect compared to the control condition. The findings from the current study demonstrate the utility of the expressive writing intervention in increasing ethnic identity and reducing psychological symptoms among biracial Americans and Asian Americans. Clinical implications are discussed.