Abstract
This study examined the cognitive characteristics of an unselected clinical population to determine the extent to which two current conceptions of faulty thinking, irrationality and negative self-statements, were differentially associated with pervasive and situation-specific forms of anxiety. Subjects were 25 male and 33 female adults requesting therapy at a community clinic. They were assessed on two indices of anxiety, the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale and the Fear of Heights Survey, and on two measures of faulty thinking, the Irrational Beliefs Test and the Situations Questionnaire. Results indicated that the pervasive form of anxiety, social anxiety, is significantly correlated with only irrational thinking, while the situation-specific form of anxiety, acrophobia, is significantly correlated with both irrationality and negative self-statements. Several additional relationships were identified, notably, the greater tendency of phobic than socially anxious subjects to emit negative self-statements and, for phobic subjects, the greater tendency to emit negative self-statements than to think irrationally. The implications of these findings for cognitive behavioral theory and therapy are discussed.
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Sutton-Simon, K., Goldfried, M.R. Faulty thinking patterns in two types of anxiety. Cogn Ther Res 3, 193–203 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01172605
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01172605