Striving towards personally meaningful goals is positively related to well-being. We investigate a brief writing intervention, instructing individuals to define and reappraise their fears related to personally meaningful goals and/or desired personal changes. 154 participants were randomized into a fear-setting writing intervention plus psychoeducation (n = 92), or a waitlist control group (n = 62). Participants filled out questionnaires at baseline, posttest, and 1-week follow-up. Latent change scores models revealed significantly larger increases in motivation to act (subscale perceived success probability, d = 0.27) and positive affect (d = 0.40) in the intervention compared to the control group from baseline to posttest. Results indicate that the effects persisted at the 1-week follow-up. In addition, we found a significant decrease in fear of failure (subscale fear of shame and embarrassment) from baseline to follow-up in the intervention condition (but not from baseline to the posttest). We found no significant effects of fear-setting for motivation to act (subscale fear of no success), fear of failure (subscale fear of devaluing one?s self-estimate), self-efficacy, negative affect, and optimism. This study provides initial evidence that fear-setting can assist people in changing motivation-related cognitive-affective states related to goal attainment and well-being.

努力实现对个人有意义的目标与幸福感呈正相关。我们调查了简短的写作干预，指导个人定义和重新评估与个人有意义的目标和/或期望的个人改变相关的恐惧。 154 名参与者被随机分为恐惧写作干预加心理教育组 (n = 92) 或候补对照组 (n = 62)。参与者在基线、测试后和 1 周随访时填写了调查问卷。潜在变化评分模型显示，从基线到后测，与对照组相比，干预组的行动动机（子量表感知成功概率，d = 0.27）和积极影响（d = 0.40）显着增加。结果表明，效果在 1 周的随访中持续存在。此外，我们发现在干预条件下，从基线到随访（但不是从基线到后测试），对失败的恐惧（对羞耻和尴尬的次级恐惧）显着减少。我们发现恐惧设置对行动动机（对失败的次级恐惧）、对失败的恐惧（对贬低自我评价的次级恐惧）、自我效能、负面情绪和乐观情绪没有显着影响。这项研究提供了初步证据，表明恐惧设置可以帮助人们改变与目标实现和幸福感相关的动机相关的认知情感状态。