Exposure in sensu to a fictive unjust situation and perspective change does not result in reduced embitterment-An...

Embitterment can occur as a reaction to unjust life events which damage the person's life values. It can lead to impairment of work ability and participation in life generally. Methods to reduce embitterment have been developed and tested in clinical samples. Perspective-change is a core method which can be trained in order to get distance from a hurting event and reduce embitterment.

This experimental study investigates whether perspective-change can be used as a 1-shot mini-intervention to reduce subclinical embitterment. People (N = 155) from the general population completed the experiment. They were first asked about their life values, whether they had experienced and were still affected by a hurting event, and their degree of embitterment. Then a fictive unjust situation (downgrading at work) was presented, and the person was asked to project his or her thoughts into the described situation. Randomly, one half of the participants were given instructions for a perspective change in order to relativize the meaning of the hurting event. Degree of embitterment was again assessed after exposure to the fictive situation.

Embitterment was not significantly reduced after in comparison to before the fictive situation. There were no differences between the group that received instructions for perspective-change and the group which did not.

An ultrashort intervention by means of exposure to a fictive unjust situation and perspective-change did not result in the reduction of individual embitterment. Relevant reduction of individual embitterment may require exposure to the own individual unjust event, and several or repeated trainings of perspective-change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).