Affect labeling enhances exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety
This is the second clinical test of affect labelling, applied to fear of public speaking rather than to spiders. The technique is the same: while facing the feared situation, the person names what they are feeling rather than reasoning themselves out of it or distracting themselves. The question is whether that makes the exposure work better, since exposure is the active ingredient of the standard treatment and anything that improves it is clinically useful. The title reports that it does. This vault cites it alongside the spider study from the same group, which found the naming group showing the smallest physical fear response a week later, and alongside the experimental work finding that naming can also impede reappraisal, since the picture is not uniform. Written without an abstract, from the title and the companion study cited here.
This is the second clinical test of affect labelling, applied to fear of public speaking rather than to spiders. The technique is the same: while facing the feared situation, the person names what they are feeling rather than reasoning themselves out of it or distracting themselves. The question is whether that makes the exposure work better, since exposure is the active ingredient of the standard treatment and anything that improves it is clinically useful. The title reports that it does. This vault cites it alongside the spider study from the same group, which found the naming group showing the smallest physical fear response a week later, and alongside the experimental work finding that naming can also impede reappraisal, since the picture is not uniform. Written without an abstract, from the title and the companion study cited here.
Written from the the paper's title and the companion study by the same group, cited here.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
68, 27-36. PMID 25795524. Greater use of emotion labels was associated with greater fear reduction; effects appeared for physiological arousal and not for self-reported fear.
Where we use it
- Why Saying It Out Loud Makes It Feel Smaller, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2015.03.004
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2015.03.004