Effectiveness of a Crowdsourced Cognitive Reappraisal Intervention

There are many ways to manage stress and mood, including exercise, diet, and relaxation practices. Cognitive-based techniques are also extremely powerful. Simply changing how you think about stressful situations can dramatically affect the way you feel. Individuals who routinely use strategies like cognitive reappraisal exhibit an enviable affective profile: studies suggest these individuals generally have less stress, lower incidence of depression, and better social functioning than those who rely on less adaptive emotion regulatory techniques. Techniques like cognitive reappraisal are also integral to many evidence-based psychotherapeutic traditions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and rational-emotive therapy.

Unfortunately, cognitive techniques can be hard to learn. Thinking flexibly about stressful thoughts and situations requires creativity and poise, faculties that often elude us when we need them the most. In this study, the investigators evaluate a web-based technology that uses crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer interactions to help people learn cognitive-based techniques and apply them throughout their daily lives.

The goal of the proposed study is to see whether the investigators' technology is more engaging and more effective at reducing depression symptoms than a web-based expressive writing platform. While the investigators are most interested in how this intervention affects depression symptoms, the investigators will also assess other psychological variables and the investigators will open the study to the general population.

Participation in this study will last three weeks. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either a crowdsourcing reappraisal platform or an expressive writing platform. All study procedures (subject recruitment, baseline and follow-up assessments, interventions) will be conducted online.

Inclusion criteria

• An email account, a desktop computer, and broadband Internet access
• Access to modern web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox)
• Native English speaker
• 18 to 35 years old

Exclusion criteria

• Planning to be without Internet access during the scheduled intervention time