Wise Interventions and Responses to Stress

Summary

This study compares the effects of two wise interventions (implicit theory of personality intervention and implicit theory of personality intervention plus self-affirmation) with a control condition in the stress responses of young adults. Responses include respiratory sinus arrhythmia, heart rate, skin conductance level, cortisol levels, and mood.

Conditions

• Stress, Physiological
• Stress, Psychological
• Social Stress
• Depression

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

ITP+SA Wise intervention

Intervention designed to promote well-being and resilience in late adolescents and young adults. It includes two components: a self-affirmation (SA) activity and an ITP intervention. The SA component includes a list of values so that they could choose the three most important for them. Next, they are asked to write why those selected values are the most important to them. The ITP component resembled the intervention developed by David S. Yeager and colleagues and it was adapted to first year university students. It consisted of three parts. First, participants are asked to read scientific studies that provide evidence that behaviors are controlled pathways in the brain that have the potential to be changed under the right circumstances. Second, participants read several testimonials purportedly written by second year university students to bring credibility to the ITP. Finally, participants are asked to write their own version of such a narrative (self-persuasive writing exercise).

BEHAVIORAL

ITP Wise intervention

Intervention designed to promote well-being and resilience in late adolescents and young adults based on four general types of change strategies: (1) scientific knowledge, (2) generation of new meanings, (3) commitment through action, and (4) active reflection. It includes the ITP component described above for the ITP+SA Wise intervention.

BEHAVIORAL

Control condition

The control intervention was designed to have a similar structure than the experimental interventions, including also reading and writing tasks, but that they were not in any way related to the contents of the experimental interventions. In particular, participants were asked to read an article about the fire that took place in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris that had been recently published in a newspaper. Starting from the accident of the Notre Dame cathedral, the article focuses on reflecting on the problem of heritage conservation and analyzing the situation of other important cathedrals. After reading the article, the participants were asked to write a few lines evaluating in their opinion the importance of the conservation of historical buildings such as those mentioned and how much of the public economic budget should be used for heritage conservation.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Basque Country Government

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Spanish Government

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Deusto

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Esther Calvete, PhD · University of Deusto

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

26 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-09-01

Primary Completion

2020-02-21

Completion

2020-02-21

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations