Comparison of Rationales in Symptom Prescription

Abstract

The present study examines the effects of the overt presentation of a variety of rationales underlying symptom prescription directives in a brief therapy experiment with anxious college student undergraduates. Forty undergraduate volunteers received a directive to increase their anxiety under one of four rationale conditions: (a) no rationale, in which the directive was given without a rationale; (b) positive refraining, which stressed the positive characteristics of anxiety symptoms; (c) performance anxiety, which described the vicious cycle created by direct attempts to decrease anxiety; and (d) double-bind, in which students were told that the counselor expected them to change whether or not they followed the directive and why this was so. Results showed significant therapeutic gain across all four treatment conditions on outcome measures of anxiety, internal attributions for change and self-efficacy; however, there were no differential effects due to type of rationale on any measure.