Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.

Syndromal classification is a well-developed diagnostic system but has failed to deliver on its promise of the identification of functional pathological processes. Functional analysis is tightly connected to treatment but has failed to develop testable. replicable classification systems. Functional diagnostic dimensions are suggested as a way to develop the functional classification approach, and experiential avoidance is described as 1 such dimension. A wide range of research is reviewed showing that many forms of psychopathology can be conceptualized as unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories, and other private experiences. It is argued that experiential avoidance, as a functional diagnostic dimension, has the potential to integrate the efforts and findings of researchers from a wide variety of theoretical paradigms, research interests, and clinical domains and to lead to testable new approaches to the analysis and treatment of behavioral disorders.

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Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment.

The present study describes the development of a short, general measure of experiential avoidance, based on a specific theoretical approach to this process. A theoretically driven iterative exploratory analysis using structural equation modeling on data from a clinical sample yielded a single factor comprising 9 items. A fully confirmatory factor analysis upheld this same 9-item factor in an independent clinical sample. The operational characteristics of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ) were then examined in 8 additional samples. All totaled, over 2,400 participants were studied. As expected, higher levels of experiential avoidance were associated with higher levels of general psychopathology, depression, anxiety, a variety of specific fears, trauma, and a lower quality of life. The AAQ related to more specific measures of avoidant coping and to self-deceptive positivity, but the relation to psychopathology could not be fully accounted for by these alternative measures. The data provide some initial support for the model of experiential avoidance based on Relational Frame Theory that is incorporated into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and provides researchers with a preliminary measure for use in population-based studies on experiential avoidance.

Measuring experiential avoidance: A preliminary test of a working model

The present study proposed and tested a motivational model of alcohol use in which people are hypothesized to use alcohol to regulate both positive and negative emotions. Two central premises underpin this model: (a) that enhancement and coping motives for alcohol use are proximal determinants of alcohol use and abuse through which the influence of expectancies, emotions, and other individual differences are mediated and (b) that enhancement and coping motives represent phenomenologically distinct behaviors having both unique antecedents and consequences. This model was tested in 2 random samples (1 of adults, 1 of adolescents) using a combination of moderated regression and path analysis corrected for measurement error. Results revealed strong support for the hypothesized model in both samples and indicate the importance of distinguishing psychological motives for alcohol use.

Drinking to regulate positive and negative emotions : a motivational model of alcohol use

This paper presents the development and validation of a self-report measure of emotional distress tolerance. The initial scale was developed in Study 1 (N = 642). The scale evinced expected relations with other measures of affective functioning, supporting its convergent and discriminant validity. Criterion validity was supported by significant negative associations with substance use coping but not enhancement motives. Study 2 (N = 823), extended the results of the initial factor analysis, indicating that the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS) contains four first-order factors, which are indicators of a single second-order general distress tolerance factor. Study 2 indicated that the DTS was stable over a 6-month interval and the DTS was prospectively associated with alcohol problems among men. In both studies, males reported significantly higher levels of distress tolerance than women.

The Distress Tolerance Scale: Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure

A stressor vulnerability model of stress-induced drinking was tested in a stratified random sample of 1,316 Black and White adult drinkers. Stressors were highly predictive of both alcohol use and drinking problems among men who relied on avoidant forms of emotion coping or held strong positive expectancies for alcohol's effects and accounted for more than 35% of the variance in alcohol use among the subgroup of men who were high in both vulnerability factors. In contrast, stressors were negatively related among men who were low in both and were unrelated among women regardless of their coping or expectancies. These findings suggest that tension reduction theories of alcohol use are overly broad and that individual characteristics must be considered to account for stress-related effects on alcohol use and abuse. Language: en

Stress and Alcohol Use: Moderating Effects of Gender, Coping, and Alcohol Expectancies

Objective: The alcohol expectancy construct has become prominent in contemporary psychosocial approaches to understanding alcohol use and abuse. In 1980 Brown and colleagues developed the 90-item Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (AEQ) to assess experiences. Rohsenow modified this instrument to create the 40-item Alcohol Effects Questionnaire (AEQ-2). In the present study, we replaced the dichotomous response format of the AEQ-2 with a six-point scale to create the AEQ-3. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the AEQ-3 for factor structure confirmation and invariance across gender and race subgroups. Method: We administered the AEQ-3 to a large general population sample (N = 1,260). The instrument was self-administered during a structured interview. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test a correlated eight-factor model consisting of six positive expectancies and two negative expectancies. Fit indices revealed that the eight-factor model fit the data moderately well. Furthermore, th...

J B Skinner

Papers

Stress and Alcohol Use: Moderating Effects of Gender, Coping, and Alcohol Expectancies

A revised Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire: factor structure confirmation, and invariance in a general population sample.