Record Detail

The field of positive psychology has identifiedbrief interventions that increase individuals’ well-being anddecrease depressive symptoms. An example is the bestpossible self (BPS) activity. It is a writing exercise that asksparticipants to project themselves into the future, andimaginetheyhavemetalltheirgoalsineverydomainoftheirlife. The first objective of this study was to examine theeffectiveness of BPS in increasing subjective well-being ofyouths in an Asian context. 191 participants were recruitedfrom an institute of higher learning in Singapore. Classeswere randomly assigned toeither the experimental orcontrolgroup.TheexperimentalgroupwasgiveninstructionsfortheBPS intervention while the control group was asked to writeabout their past week. Participants completed two sessionsthat were 1 month apart. Results indicated that for the firstsession, the experimental group exhibited a significantlylarger decrease in negative affect compared to the controlgroup. Analyses of change scores indicated that changes inpositive affect were related to changes in optimism scoreswhereaschangesinnegativeaffectwererelatedtochangesinlife satisfaction and depressive symptoms. Implications ofthe findings are discussed