Best Possible Selves (BPS) Activity Notes

The lecture focuses on Laura King's Best Possible Selves Activity.
Writing has known benefits for individuals who have experienced trauma, exemplified by Arnold Zable's writing workshops after the Black Saturday bushfires in Australia (2009).
- Participants found writing to be more empowering than counseling because it placed them in charge of their narrative.

Laura King investigated how writing could help people cope with trauma.
In line with positive psychology, King explored the benefits of writing about positive experiences.
She developed the Best Possible Self activity to test this.

King's 2001 paper outlines instructions for participants:
- Imagine your life in the future where everything has gone as well as possible.
- You've worked hard and achieved all your life goals.
- Consider this the realization of all your life dreams.
- Write about what you have imagined.

Recruited 82 Swedish students to study the best possible selves activity.
- 44 participants assigned to the best possible selves condition.
- 38 participants in the control group.
Measures included:
- Dispositional optimism.
- Personality traits: extroversion and neuroticism.
- Positive and negative affect (measured using the PANAS, as discussed in Week 1).
- Positive and negative future expectancies.
Positive and negative future expectancies and affect were measured at pre- and post-test.
Procedure:
- Best possible selves condition: 15 minutes of writing about best possible selves, followed by 5 minutes of mental imagery.
- Control condition: Wrote about and imagined a typical day in their life.
Results:
- The positive future thinking group had significantly larger increases in positive affect and positive future expectancies compared to the control group.
- The increase in positive expectancies was not dependent on the mood effect.
Summary: Imagining a positive future can increase expectancies for a positive future.

Laura King studied 82 undergraduate psychology students, randomly assigned to four conditions.
Participants wrote about one of four topics for 20 minutes each day for four consecutive days.
Four conditions:
- Trauma only group: Wrote about a traumatic life event over four days.
- BPS only group: Undertook the Best Possible Self activity and wrote about their positive future for four days.
- Combination group: Wrote about a traumatic event for the first two days, followed by writing about a positive future for the next two days.
- Control group: Wrote about their daily plans for four consecutive days.
Mood was measured before and after writing.
Health center data for illness were obtained with participant consent.
Subjective well-being was measured three weeks post-writing intervention.

Writing about life goals was significantly less upsetting than writing about trauma.
Writing about life goals was associated with a significant increase in subjective well-being (high life satisfaction, high positive affect, and low negative affect).
Five months after writing, a significant interaction emerged:
- Writing about trauma, best possible self, or both was associated with decreased illness compared with controls.
Writing about self-regulatory topics can be associated with the same health benefits as writing about trauma.

In their 2006 paper, "How to Increase and Sustain Positive Emotion: The Effects of Expressing Gratitude and Visualising Best Possible Selves," Sheldon and Lyubomirsky found that the best possible selves exercise may be the most beneficial for raising and maintaining positive mood.

Lyubomirsky's instructions from The How of Happiness (chapter on gratitude and positive thinking) are:
- Imagine yourself in the future, after everything has gone as well as it possibly could.
- You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals.
- Think of this as the realization of your life dreams, and of your own best potentials.
While slightly different, these instructions still tap into positive future thinking.