'Talk about negative feelings to cope with scary situations'

According to the study, people use language every day to express their emotions, and this can actually help them cope with a scary situation.

Katharina Kircanski and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles investigated whether verbalising a current emotional experience, even when that experience is negative, might be an effective method for treating for people with spider phobias.

Participants were split into different experimental groups and they were instructed to approach a spider over several consecutive days.

One group was told to put their feelings into words by describing their negative emotions about approaching the spider.

Another group was asked to 'reappraise' the situation by describing the spider using emotionally neutral words.

A third group was told to talk about an unrelated topic (things in their home) and a fourth group received no intervention.

Participants who put their negative feelings into words were most effective at lowering their levels of physiological arousal. They were also slightly more willing to approach the spider.

The findings suggest that talking about your feelings - even if they're negative - may help to cope with a scary situation.

The authors concluded that one potential way to improve mood could be to talk about negative past events as something that already happened as opposed to something that was happening.

The study was published online in Psychological Science.