How People Talk About Rejection: Linguistic Profiles of Self-Compassion, Reappraisal, and Control Writing Conditions

Objectives: Social rejection presents emotional challenges that can impact psychological health. Writing interventions that promote regulation strategies in response to stress, such as self-compassion and detached reappraisal, have shown promise in fostering resilience and adaptive coping. This study aimed to evaluate whether self-compassion and detached reappraisal writing interventions following rejection are associated with emotional and psychological processing, reflected in linguistic patterns, particularly among individuals experiencing increased psychological symptoms. Method: One hundred and sixty-six adult participants with elevated levels of rejection sensitivity were recruited for an online study. They completed psychological symptom measures, were prompted to recall an experience of social rejection, and were then randomized to self-compassion, detached reappraisal, or neutral writing conditions regarding the rejection experience. Results: Intervention condition predicted distinct linguistic patterns. Self-compassion was associated with more cognitive processing (p < 0.001) compared to detached reappraisal. More severe psychological symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety) were associated with more negative emotion word use in the control group, but this effect was attenuated in the self-compassion (p < 0.05) and reappraisal (p < 0.05) groups. Findings suggest that brief writing interventions can buffer symptom-linked emotional expression through distinct language-based mechanisms. Conclusions: These findings highlight the potential of brief writing interventions to serve as scalable, low-intensity tools for promoting adaptive emotional processing and mitigating the expressive impact of psychological distress. Trial registration: The study was pre-registered https://osf.io/jdnrw.