Effects of Positive Affirmations on Depressive Symptoms among Female and Male Senior Barrett Honors Students

The purpose of this study was to examine whether positive affirmations can lower depressive symptoms amongst male and female Arizona State University (ASU) honors students. Male and female ASU honors students (20-22 years of age; N=40) were recruited from Barrett, the Honors College, through email and online newsletters. Students who had been previously or were at the time diagnosed with clinical depression were not permitted to participate in the study. Only 9 female and 14 males completed the entire study. Participants completed a pre- and post- test that each consisting of reading aloud questions and their answers from the Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) while being video and audio recorded. Participants were given a list of 20 affirmations after the pre-test and were instructed to choose and read to themselves a new affirmation three times a day, 3 times a week for a total of 6 weeks. There was an average increase among all participants' BDI scores, but no significance was found in the improvement. Emotional responses were captured using the facial recognition software, Noldus FaceReader, and was used to observe whether there was emotional dissonance in the BDI answers. The correlation between the emotion "sad" and the answer chosen was found by using Pearson's r for each participants. There were only 2 total interviews that indicated a strong positive correlation and 1 interview that indicated strong negative correlation. All others were either moderate or minimal correlation, showing that the majority of participants' emotions may have not affected their answer choices. Results indicated there is no significant improvement when using affirmations to improve depressive symptoms and mood.