I enjoy expressively writing to cool off sometimes, so I was interested in checking out the study itself.
The link to the actual study from 2017/09/08 can be found here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28884815
"The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry."
> The error-related negativity (ERN), an ERP elicited immediately after errors, is enlarged among individuals with anxiety. The relationship between anxiety and enlarged ERN has spurred interest in understanding potential therapeutic benefits of decreasing its amplitude within anxious individuals. The current study used a tailored intervention-expressive writing-in an attempt to reduce the ERN among a sample of individuals with chronic worry. Consistent with hypotheses, the ERN was reduced in the expressive writing group compared to an unrelated writing control group. Findings provide experimental support that the ERN can be reduced among anxious individuals with tailored interventions. Expressive writing may serve to "offload" worries from working memory, therefore relieving the distracting effects of worry on cognition as reflected in a decreased ERN.
The study is not shy about what conclusions should and shouldn't be drawn from it. There is large "Limitations and future directions" section. Here are some excerpts:
> Although the current study sheds light on the utility of expressive writing in reducing the ERN among worriers, there are limitations that should be addressed in future studies.
> First, the samples size (N540) was rather small for a between-subjects investigation, and, unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception in comparable cognitive neuroscience studies (Holmes & Pizzagalli, 2010; Klawohn et al., 2016; Olvet & Hajcak, 2012)
> Second, we examined the ERN only after participants engaged in the writing and were therefore unable to assess how these processes changed from before to after writing.
> Third, we did not include a low-worry control condition. The purpose of the present study, however, was to provide a very specific test of the effects of expressive writing on the ERN in individuals with chronic levels of worry. Indeed, we meant to build upon the prior study that tested the effect of attention bias modification on the ERN (Nelson et al., 2015) by examining high-anxious individuals instead of college students sampled without regard for anxiety symptoms.
> Fourth, because we utilized a student sample, it would be useful to examine the effects of expressive writing on the ERN in clinical samples in future studies. However, as we detailed in Method, the individuals in our sample reported worry symptoms that were comparable to previous studies of patients with GAD, and by using a well-validated measure in the PSWQ, it is likely that many of our participants had GAD. Moreover, college students are not immune to psychopathology.