WISE INTERVENTIONS

College students were asked to take 15-minutes per week over 8 weeks to make regular expressions of optimism—“to visualize living a life consistent with their ideal self” in terms of romance, educational attainment, family life, etc.. In a second treatment, students were asked to make regular expressions of gratitude—to write about “times in their lives when they were grateful for something that another person did for them and then writing a letter about those experiences directly to that person (but not sending it).” Among students who self-selected into a study on a “happiness intervention,” who were presumably motivated to increase their happiness, completing either of these exercises as compared to a randomized control exercise (listing what they had done over the past week to increase “organizational skills”) increased reported greater well-being at the end of the 8-week writing period and at a 6-month follow-up. Among students who self-selected into a study on “cognitive exercises” there was no difference by condition.