Effects of the Best Possible Self Activity on Subjective Well-Being and Depressive Symptoms

• Published in: The Asia-Pacific education researcher Vol. 25; no. 3; pp. 473 - 481
• Main Authors: Liau, Albert K., Neihart, Maureen F., Teo, Chua Tee, Lo, Chrystella H. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore Springer Singapore 01-06-2016; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Anglo Americans; College Students; Control Groups; Coping; Depression (Psychology); Education; Educational Policy and Politics; Educational psychology; Evidence; Experimental Groups; Foreign Countries; Goal Orientation; International and Comparative Education; Intervention; Job Satisfaction; Learning and Instruction; Life Satisfaction; Mental depression; Optimism; Peer Relationship; Psychological Studies; Regular Article; Resistance (Psychology); Social Problems; Sociology of Education; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Well Being; Writing Exercises; Singapore; Cross-cultural; Positive psychology intervention; Well-being; Positive and negative affect; Best possible self; Optimism
• ISSN: 0119-5646; 2243-7908
• DOI: 10.1007/s40299-015-0272-z

The field of positive psychology has identified brief interventions that increase individuals’ well-being and decrease depressive symptoms. An example is the best possible self (BPS) activity. It is a writing exercise that asks participants to project themselves into the future, and imagine they have met all their goals in every domain of their life. The first objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of BPS in increasing subjective well-being of youths in an Asian context. 191 participants were recruited from an institute of higher learning in Singapore. Classes were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. The experimental group was given instructions for the BPS intervention while the control group was asked to write about their past week. Participants completed two sessions that were 1 month apart. Results indicated that for the first session, the experimental group exhibited a significantly larger decrease in negative affect compared to the control group. Analyses of change scores indicated that changes in positive affect were related to changes in optimism scores whereas changes in negative affect were related to changes in life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. Implications of the findings are discussed.