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How can we encourage ourselves to have courage? A new report by Amanda Kramer and Richard Zinbarg of Northwestern University examines the potential of a brief writing exercise as one method of doing so.

In the first of two studies, 365 undergraduate students who had either high fear of blood/injuries/injections or were recruited and then assigned to one of two conditions. Those in the “avoidance” condition were required to spend 5-10 minutes writing about a time that they encountered their feared situation (e. ., having to give a speech) but avoided it. In the “courage” condition, participants wrote about a time when they experienced fear and yet faced the feared situation successfully.

This task was followed by a computer sorting task, which consisted of 50 fear-related items. The participants were asked to quickly choose whether they would be willing to engage in the behaviors mentioned in each item.

Finally, the participants were given a short questionnaire and rated their level of courage.

The results showed that those who had written about a time when they faced their fears (as opposed to avoiding them), completed the sorting task more quickly and were more willing to face their feared situation. This was true of both blood/injuries/injections and public speaking fear groups.

In the second study, a new group of participants (with fears of public speaking) were divided into three conditions: courage, avoidance, and neutral. Like the previous study, in the first two conditions the participants wrote about situations involving avoiding or facing their fears; in the neutral condition, they simply wrote about their morning routine.

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After a 10-minute preparation stage, the participants were required to deliver a 5-minute speech intended to impress a panel of judges. They were then asked if they could return to the lab at a later date to do a similar task and be evaluated again.

The results showed that in comparison to the avoidance conditions (though not the neutral condition), the participants who had written about a time when they faced their fears were significantly more likely to agree to return to the lab in future. The willingness to return to be tested and evaluated again indicated greater courage.

Potential takeaways

Kramer and Zinbarg hope that future research will provide more details about how successful this approach can be and how to improve it (e.g., by writing for longer).

In the meantime, though the effects of the courage intervention were not large enough to “send the average person into a burning building,” they can still be of use in many cases, such as for fearful patients undergoing medical procedures or clients receiving psychological treatments, such as exposure , that involve facing their feared situation.

Here is one way to apply the study’s findings to our daily lives.

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First think of a situation that frightens you—one that is not dangerous; in other words, no daredevil stunts! For example, let us say that you have a ; assume that you have been postponing an important trip because of your fear and that you are now thinking of doing it again since your flight is coming up very soon.

Now recall the last time you flew (or tackled a different fear), when you felt quite but nevertheless went through with it.

Try to write about that experience for about 5-10 minutes in as much detail as possible. Recall what you saw and heard, but more importantly, your feelings and thoughts before, during, and after the experience.

Try this intervention with your feared object/situation/activity and see how you feel afterwards, and whether this short intervention helps increase your courageous intentions.