Savour Good Moments, Practice Mindfulness, and Reframe the Bad: A Randomized Controlled Trail (RCT) of the Mental Wellbeing Toolkit

This study examined whether an emotion regulation intervention promotes wellbeing beyond placebo effects. University students were randomly assigned to 10 days of self-practice in an intervention, placebo, or control condition. The intervention provided three 5-minute audio recordings of mindfulness, savouring, and positive reappraisal exercises. The placebo and control conditions provided “sham” exercises of breathing, distant memory recall, and recent memory recall. The intervention and placebo conditions were primed with expectancy beliefs, while the control was not. Multilevel growth modeling results showed all conditions declined in stress and negative affect and increased in positive affect and wellbeing up to 1 month later. Compared to placebo, the intervention led to a sharper positive growth in emotion regulation over time, with no other outcome differences. The placebo also showed a sharper positive growth in emotion regulation over time than the control. Suggestions are provided for future interventions to work with extant placebo effects.