Does Journaling Make You Smarter? Expressive Writing, Memory and IQ
Does journaling make you smarter? No study shows it raises IQ. Small trials found expressive writing helped working memory, and writing aids learning.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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There is no evidence that journaling makes you smarter in the sense of raising IQ, because no study has tested journaling against an IQ test. The closest evidence comes from small trials in which students who wrote about stressful experiences improved on working memory tests a few weeks later, and from a meta-analysis of 146 randomized writing studies that found an average benefit of r = .075 (about 0.15 standard deviations), mostly on measures of health and well-being.
Journaling is often promoted as a way to sharpen the mind and boost memory. This article covers what expressive writing does to working memory, how large the effects of writing about feelings really are, what writing does for learning in school, and why people who write a lot tend to score higher on verbal tests in the first place.
Expressive writing and working memory
The most interesting evidence for journaling comes from "expressive writing," a method developed by the psychologist James Pennebaker. People write about their deepest thoughts and feelings on a difficult topic, usually for about 20 minutes at a time over several sessions.
• The original experiments: Kitty Klein and Adriel Boals ran two semester-long experiments with college students. In the first, 35 first-year students who wrote about their thoughts and feelings about coming to college showed larger gains in working memory 7 weeks later than 36 students who wrote about a trivial topic. In the second, 34 students who wrote about a negative personal experience improved more than 33 who wrote about a positive one and 34 who wrote about a trivial topic. Students who used more words about causes and insight gained the most.
• A replication in Japan: Masao Yogo and Shuji Fujihara randomly assigned 104 Japanese undergraduates to write for 20 minutes about a traumatic experience, about their best possible future selves, or about a trivial topic. Only the traumatic-experience group showed better working memory, and only at the 5-week follow-up.
The authors' explanation is that writing about a worry reduces intrusive thoughts about it, which frees up attention for other tasks. That fits the results, but it means the change, if real, is about removing a temporary burden. It is not evidence that the brain's capacity grew. Both studies were small, and the outcome was a "working memory" test, which measures how much information you can hold and use at once. Working memory is related to IQ but is a narrower ability, and neither study measured IQ.
How large are the effects of writing about feelings?
Expressive writing has been tested in hundreds of trials, and the average effect is small.
• The biggest meta-analysis: Joanne Frattaroli pooled 146 randomized studies of "experimental disclosure," writing or talking about personal, meaningful topics. The average effect was r = .075, which converts to about 0.15 standard deviations. That is a real but small effect, and most outcomes were measures of psychological and physical health and of daily functioning, not of thinking ability.
• Writing before a test: In 2011, Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock reported in Science that students who spent a few minutes writing about their worries just before a high-pressure math test or a school exam scored higher, especially those who were usually anxious about tests. When a team led by Colin Camerer repeated one of its laboratory experiments with a larger sample as part of a project re-testing 21 social-science findings from Nature and Science, it was one of the eight that failed to replicate.
So the case that writing about feelings improves thinking rests on a few small studies and one high-profile result that did not hold up. It may still help some people manage stress, which is a worthwhile goal on its own.
Writing to learn: more knowledge, not more IQ
Another strand of research asks whether writing about what you study helps you learn it. This is closer to a study journal than a diary, and the evidence is better.
• Writing to learn in school: Robert Bangert-Drowns and colleagues analyzed 48 school programs in which students wrote to learn subject content. The average effect on achievement was small, about 0.17 standard deviations, and it was larger when students wrote about their own understanding and when programs ran longer.
• A newer review: Steve Graham, Sharlene Kiuhara and Meade MacKay analyzed 56 experiments in which students in grades 1 to 12 wrote about science, social studies or mathematics. Writing about the content improved learning by about 0.30 standard deviations, with similar effects in all three subjects.
• Writing and reading: Graham and Michael Hebert's meta-analysis found that writing about texts improved students' understanding of them, and that teaching writing and having students write more also improved reading.
These are effects on knowledge and school achievement. They show near transfer, improvement on material close to what was written about. Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet's reviews of cognitive training are a useful benchmark here: once studies use proper control groups, gains on abilities far from the practised task, such as general intelligence, usually shrink to almost nothing. Reading has a closer link with verbal ability, which is covered in the article on reading books and IQ. Whether writing by hand rather than typing matters is a separate question covered in the article on handwriting and IQ.
Why people who write well seem smarter
The impression that writers are smart has a real basis. It mostly runs from ability to writing.
• Verbal ability predicts writing: In a study of more than 70,000 English children, general intelligence measured at 11 accounted for 48% of the differences in English exam results at 16, which corresponds to a correlation of about .69. Children with higher ability write better on average, before any journaling habit could play a role.
• Who keeps a journal: We could not find good data on whether people who journal score higher on IQ tests. If they do, the likely explanation is selection. People who enjoy writing and reading are probably more likely to keep a journal, and both habits are linked with higher verbal scores.
The confounds are the usual ones for any habit study, chiefly education and verbal ability, along with the time and stability that let someone keep a daily journal. A study that compared journalers with non-journalers without measuring ability first could not tell which came first.
Frequently asked questions
Does journaling make you smarter?
No study shows that journaling raises IQ. Small trials found that writing about stress briefly improved working memory, and writing about course material helps students learn it.
Does journaling improve memory?
Two small randomized studies found that expressive writing about a stressful experience improved working memory scores a few weeks later. The studies were small, so the finding needs larger replications.
Does writing things down help you learn?
Yes, a little. Meta-analyses find that writing about school content improves achievement by about 0.17 to 0.30 standard deviations, an effect on knowledge rather than intelligence.
Does writing before an exam improve scores?
A widely publicized 2011 study said so, but a larger replication of one of its experiments found no effect. The evidence is too mixed to rely on.
Is journaling still worth doing?
It can be. Expressive writing has small average benefits for health and well-being, and writing about what you study helps you remember it.
The takeaway
Journaling does not make you smarter in any way that research has measured. Writing about stressful events may free up working memory for a while in some people, and writing about what you learn helps you learn it, but the effects are small and none of them involve IQ. People who write well do tend to score higher on verbal tests, mostly because ability shapes writing rather than the reverse. If you want to know where your reasoning ability stands today, try an online IQ test built by psychometricians.
References
1. Klein, K., & Boals, A. (2001). Expressive writing can increase working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(3), 520-533. [doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.130.3.520](. doi.org
2. Yogo, M., & Fujihara, S. (2008). Working memory capacity can be improved by expressive writing: A randomized experiment in a Japanese sample. British Journal of Health Psychology, 13(1), 77-80. [doi.org/10.1348/135910707X252440](. doi.org
3. Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823-865. [doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823](. doi.org
4. Ramirez, G., & Beilock, S. L. (2011). Writing about testing worries boosts exam performance in the classroom. Science, 331(6014), 211-213. [doi.org/10.1126/science.1199427](. doi.org
5. Camerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Ho, T.-H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Nave, G., Nosek, B. A., Pfeiffer, T., Altmejd, A., Buttrick, N., Chan, T., Chen, Y., Forsell, E., Gampa, A., Heikensten, E., Hummer, L., Imai, T., ... Wu, H. (2018). Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(9), 637-644. [doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0399-z](. doi.org
6. Bangert-Drowns, R. L., Hurley, M. M., & Wilkinson, B. (2004). The effects of school-based writing-to-learn interventions on academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 29-58. [doi.org/10.3102/00346543074001029](. doi.org
7. Graham, S., Kiuhara, S. A., & MacKay, M. (2020). The effects of writing on learning in science, social studies, and mathematics: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 90(2), 179-226. [doi.org/10.3102/0034654320914744](. doi.org
8. Graham, S., & Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to read: A meta-analysis of the impact of writing and writing instruction on reading. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 710-744. [doi.org/10.17763/haer.81.4.t2k0m13756113566](. doi.org
9. Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 515-520. [doi.org/10.1177/0963721417712760](. doi.org
10. Deary, I. J., Strand, S., Smith, P., & Fernandes, C. (2007). Intelligence and educational achievement. Intelligence, 35(1), 13-21. [doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.001](. doi.org
Hero image: Notebook and colorful pencils on a wooden desk, by Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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