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Affect control: Process Constraints versus Catharsis

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Abstract

Recent social psychological research has indicated that merely thinking about some object will, under certain conditions, result in more intensified feelings (attitude polarization) toward that object. Implications of a selfgenerated attitude change model were tested for therapeutic interventions concerning phobias, particularly fear of public speaking. Subjects, who had previously indicated that they had a strong fear of public speaking, were exposed to one of three treatment conditions: Process Constraints condition, in which subjects were asked to make their beliefs and the derivations of those beliefs about public speaking explicit; Catharsis condition, in which subjects thought in an unconstrained manner about public speaking; and a Control condition. Relative to control subjects, subjects in the Process Constraints condition were expected to show reduced affect, whereas those in the Catharsis condition were expected to show increased affect. Results supported these hypotheses on self-report and physiological measures, but not on behavioral ratings. Implications of these results for therapeutic intervention, particularly Ellis's RET, were discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, 30602, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Abraham Tesser, Christopher Leone & E. Gil Clary

Authors
  1. Abraham Tesser
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  2. Christopher Leone
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  3. E. Gil Clary
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Additional information

We gratefully acknowledge George Muse for his seminal suggestions regarding the potential applicability of the work on self-generated attitude change to psychotherapy. We are also grateful to Patricia Kent for serving as the first experimenter. This research was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (SOC 74-13925) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-05802-01) to Abraham Tesser.

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Tesser, A., Leone, C. & Clary, E.G. Affect control: Process Constraints versus Catharsis. Cogn Ther Res 2, 265–274 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01185788

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