Journal of Rational-Emotive Therapy, Vol. 5, No.

4, Winter 1987

IRRATIONAL BELIEFS IN THE

ARTICULATED THOUGHTS OF
COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH
SOCIAL ANXIETY

Gerald C. Davison and Vivien Zighelboim

University of Southern California

ABSTRACT: Cognitive conceptualizations of social anxiety emphasize the

role of negative self-statements, unrealistic expectations, and irrational be-
liefs in the development and maintenance of anxiety in social-evaluative situ-
ations. Research into these cognitive factors has entailed administration of
questionnaires and instructions to subjects to write down their thoughts dur-
ing a preceding or impending real-life encounter. These methodologies are
criticized on several grounds, such as their assessment of abstract, generalized
views by the subject of his/her typical way of thinking over a broad range of
circumstances: constraints on responses because of experimenter-provided al-
ternatives: and delays between the eliciting events and self-talk such that re-
call is subject to distortion and forgetting. Reported here is the use of a re-
cently developed paradigm for uncovering thoughts in complex social
situations. In the articulated thoughts during simulated situations method,
subjects role-play participation in an audiotaped interpersonal encounter and,
at predetermined points, verbalize thoughts elicited by a short segment of the
fictitious event. The think-aloud data are taped for later content analysis. The
purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between irrational beliefs
and social anxiety. Results confirm those of two previous related experiments
in that subjects articulated thoughts of greater irrationality when confronted
with a stressful social-evaluative situation than with a neutral one. In addi-
tion, individuals with a tendency to become anxious in social situations articu-
lated more irrational thoughts than did control subjects, confirming the basic
assumption of cognitive-behavioral approaches that certain patterns of unreal-
istic thinking are associated with psychological distress.

Experimental psychopathologists have relied on three theoretical

models to explain the etiology and maintenance of social anxiety (Cur-

II is a pleasure to acknowledge the collegial cooperation of Gloria Porter. Barbara Cadow. Anita
Siegman, and the other staff of the USC Counseling Center for screening and referring clients as
potential subjects. Thanks go also to Susan Ellison and Toni Wells for their skillful content analy-
sis of the data. Valuable statistical consultation came from Rand Wilcox of the University of
Southern California and Cora Lee Yale of UCLA. Marcia Johnson offered useful comments on the
manuscript. Requests for reprints should he sent to Gerald C. Davison, Department of Psychology,
Seeley G. Mudd Building, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 10151.
• 1957 Ilunlun 11:n, (Sen Press
2:38
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM 239
ran, 1977). The first model conceives of social anxiety as resulting from
classical conditioning episodes during which previously neutral social
situations are associated with aversive stimuli and thereby become
fearsome. The second model views anxiety in social-evaluative situa-
tions as resulting from a deficit of social skills or from an inappropriate
behavioral repertoire.
The present study examines social anxiety in the context of the third
perspective. A cognitive conceptualization stresses the role of negative
or maladaptive self-statements, unrealistic expectations, irrational be-
liefs, negative self-evaluations or faulty cognitive appraisal as determi-
nants of anxiety in social-evaluative situations (Glass & Merluzzi,
1981). This conceptualization is part of a growing tendency in theory
and research to focus on cognitive factors in psychotherapy and psycho-
pathology (Bandura, 1977; Beck, 1967; Davison, 1966; Ellis, 1962;
Goldfried & Davison, 1976; London, 1964; Mahoney, 1974; Meichen-
baum, 1975; & Mischel, 1968).
The main assumption of cognitive behavioral approaches to psycho-
pathology is that the way a person thinks is a major factor in how s/he
feels and behaves; a corollary is that alteration of thought will contrib-
ute to therapeutic change. For example, Ellis (e.g., Ellis, 1962, 1977;
Ellis & Bernard, 1985) holds that certain beliefs cause maladaptive
emotional reactions, and that changing them in certain ways can alle-
viate a broad range of psychological distress.
Cognitive Assessment of Social Anxiety
In a review of cognitive assessment techniques, Merluzzi, Glass and
Genest (1981) note that the Jones Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT) (Jones,
1969) is one of the most frequently used measures for research on the
cognitive nature and treatment of social-evaluative anxiety. This ques-
tionnaire is designed to assess a person's degree of endorsement of vari-
ous irrational beliefs within the theoretical framework of Albert Ellis.
Newmark, Frerking, Cook, and Newmark (1973) conducted one of the
first studies using the IBT. They administered this test to subjects diag-
nosed as neurotic, personality disordered, or normal, and found that
many more of the neurotics than the other two groups endorsed irra-
tional beliefs. Goldfried and Sobocinski (1975) found that women who
held a strong belief in the importance of social approval on the IBT re-
acted with greater self-reported anxiety and hostility when they imag-
ined themselves being rejected in a social situation than did women for
whom this belief was less important. More recently, Gormally, Sips,
240 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY
Raphael, Edwin, and Varvil-Weld (1981) compared competent daters to
a clinical sample of anxious men and found that the latter endorsed ir-
rational beliefs more strongly on four of the five IBT subscales. The
IBT, moreover, has been used in cognitive therapy outcome research in
the treatment of social anxiety. Although some researchers (Kanter &
Goldfried, 1979) found that subjects who had cognitive interventions
showed significantly lower IBT total and subscale scores relative to
waiting list controls, others (Derry & Stone, 1979) have uncovered no
posttreatment IBT differences. More research is thus needed to estab-
lish the validity of the IBT (Merluzzi et al., 1981).
Critical limitations exist in the use of any questionnaire or inventory
to assess irrational beliefs. For example, to answer questions on the IBT
"
such as "There is no such thing as an ideal set of circumstances, a sub-
ject must reflect on past experiences and then draw general conclusions
that exemplify his or her characteristic way of thinking. The experi-
menter thereby assesses subjects' general or abstracted views, not
what they may think in a particular situation. Another limitation of
'
questionnaires is that they tend to restrict subjects thoughts to
experimenter-defined categories of thinking or even to specific
thoughts. As a result, the experimenter might miss some important
thoughts by omitting categories from the questionnaire. Furthermore,
and perhaps of greater importance, categories or exemplars can be lead-
ing or suggestive, and the experimenter may thus unintentionally cue
certain thoughts in the subject. Because little is known at this time
about cognition and psychiatric disorder, it seems preferable to con-
struct a paradigm that places as few constraints as possible on the data
the subject may provide.
Several studies have allowed for subjects' open-ended responses.
Sutton-Simon and Goldfried (1979) correlated IBT scores with subjects'
positive and negative self-statements and with measures of social anxi-
ety and fear of heights. The tendency to hold irrational beliefs was posi-
tively associated with social anxiety and tended to correlate with nega-
tive self-statements emitted in social situations. Craighead, Kimball,
and Rehak (1977) found that subjects high on the importance of social
approval scale of the IBT made more negative self-statements while
visualizing social rejection scenes than did subjects low on the scale.
Cacioppo, Glass, and Merluzzi (1979) told male subjects who were ei-
ther high or low in social anxiety that they would soon be interacting
with a woman in a conversation about college life. The experimenter
then left the room, returning three minutes later to ask the subject to
write down what he had been thinking during the waiting period. Both
the subject and the experimenter then rated the thoughts as positive,
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGIIELBO1M 241
negative or neutral. More negative self-statements and a more nega-
tive view of themselves and the impending conversation were emitted
by subjects high on social anxiety than by less socially anxious subjects.
Similarly, Halford and Foddy (1982) found that socially anxious indi-
viduals emitted more self-statements of disapproval by others in social
interactions than did less anxious people.
The paradigm used by Cacioppo, et al., (1979) appears to be a better
vehicle for eliciting realistic answers than are the textual and typically
hypothetical situations described on questionnaires. Nevertheless, ar-
ranging lengthy and complex social situations would be costly and of-
ten impractical. Moreover, whenever there is a noticeable interval be-
'
tween the occurrence of thoughts and feelings and subjects report of
them, there is the risk that important reactions will be forgotten or dis-
torted during recall. Finally, studies such as Cacioppo, et al., require
subjects to write down their thoughts and feelings. This approach has
serious drawbacks. Not only do written reports take longer than verbal,
but it is generally more difficult to write about one's thoughts than to
talk about them, especially since speaking is probably closer to think-
ing. There is a good chance that subjects will attempt to express more
complicated or subtle thoughts with verbal reports than with written
reports; and thinking aloud probably leads to more nearly complete
reporting than writing. (For reviews of historical and contemporary
think-aloud research, see inter alia Ericsson & Simon, 1981; Meichen-
baum & Cameron, 1981; and Kendall & Hollon, 1981.)
Articulated Thoughts During Simulated
Situations Paradigm
An improved paradigm for examining thoughts in a variety of situa-
tions of relevance to cognitive behavioral workers seems to require a
number of features. It should permit open-ended verbal responding that
reflects, as much as possible, ongoing thought processes rather than
retrospective reporting. Subjects should be constrained as little as pos-
sible in what they report, and they should be enabled to make their re-
ports with ease and a minimum of delay. The experimenter should also
be able to specify and manipulate the situations to which subjects are
reacting while at the same time being able to present events that are
sufficiently realistic and complex. Situations unlikely to be bothersome
to subjects should be presented along with troubling situations; hith-
erto, direct comparisons have not often been made. Finally, the proce-
dure should not be prohibitively expensive in time or money.
The study reported here utilizes a paradigm that provides virtually
242 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY
"on-line" assessment of cognition during complex experimenter-con-
trolled interpersonal situations. Called articulated thoughts during
simulated situations (ATSS), the procedure has a subject pretend that
he/she is a participant in a role-played interaction, such as being the
object of someone ' s critical remarks. At predetermined points in the
audiotaped scene, there is a pause, during which the subject is in-
structed to verbalize whatever is on his/her mind in reaction to what
has occurred just seconds earlier. Subject ' s tape-recorded verbalizations
are later content-analyzed and compared both to his/her articulated
thoughts to contrasting stimulus tapes and to thoughts collected
from subjects differing on personality dimensions of interest to the
experimenter.
In two previous experiments from our laboratory (Davison, Robins, &
Johnson, 1983; Davison, Feldman, & Osborn, 1984), it was demon-
strated that college undergraduates found the procedure credible, that
articulated thoughts could be reliably content: analyzed, and that the
technique pulled from subjects verbalized congitions that varied mean-
ingfully with situations to which they were exposed (to wit, subjects
thought more irrationally in stressful situations than in neutral ones).
Unsuccessful in both experiments were attempts to demonstrate rela-
tionships between verbalized thoughts and several personality invento-
ries, most particularly the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson
& Friend, 1969) and the IBT. These relationships were sought in light
of predictions from the contemporary cognitive behavior theory of Ellis
that people who are sensitive to criticism have a tendency to think in
demanding, absolutistic ways and will manifest catastrophizing and
"irrational" thinking when criticized by others.
Both experiments used subject analogues, that is, unselected under-
graduates who scored at the extremes of the FNE and the IBT. Over-
looking for the sake of argument the likelihood of significant error vari-
ance in the self-report inventories, a sample of therapy clients with
social anxiety was employed in this study for a better test of the basic
hypothesis that people with social anxiety generate more irrational
thoughts than controls when exposed to social criticism situations.
METHOD
Subjects
Two groups of college students participated in this study. The clinical group
consisted of 8 undergraduates (4 men and 4 women) in therapy at the USC
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM 243
Counseling Center. They had been screened by their therapists, who used the
following criteria in referring them for the experiment:
1. The person experienced anxiety in social situations, was shy,
inhibited—in general overly sensitive to social evaluation or criti-
cism.
2. The person was not psychotic or borderline.
3. The person spoke English reasonably well (a consideration only for
foreign students).
Clients who volunteered were paid $6 for participation.
The control group consisted of 15 introductory psychology undergraduates (8
women and 7 men) who participated in this study to receive extra credit to-
ward course requirements.
Simulated Situations
Students from the University of Southern California Drama department
were hired to play the roles of speakers in two taped simulated conditions;
these tapes had been used previously in the Davison, et al., (1984) experiment.
Each was composed of seven spoken segments of 15–25 seconds duration with
a 30 second blank interval interspersed between each segment to permit sub-
jects to articulate their thoughts.
Overheard Conversation Tape (Stress Condition). On this tape, subjects were
asked to imagine overhearing two acquaintances (a man and a woman) talk
about them and the impression they had made at a recent social function. The
speakers were not aware of the subject's presence. Six of the seven segments
contained statements designed to be critical of the individual subject's appear-
ance, attitudes and behavior, such as "He (she) just blurts out the first thing
that comes to his (her) mind," and ... he (she) looked so out of place," and "You
have to be blind to the facts of the universe to talk like that." Segment 4 was in
defense of the student, acknowledging that we all "get pretty argumentative
when it comes to certain things." This noncritical segment was included to in-
crease the credibility of the situation. Separate tapes were used for male and
female subjects, differing only in the gender of the pronouns used.
Control Tape (Neutral Condition). On this tape, the subject was asked to imag-
ine sitting in the school cafeteria, listening in on two strangers (a man and a
woman) discuss an unindentified class they are taking and the professor who
teaches it; both the class and the professor are unfamiliar to the subject. Seg-
ments 1, 2, 3, and 5 contained statements that were critical of the class and/or
'
the teacher, such as "He doesn t seem to care very much about what he is
teaching," whereas segments 6 and 7 were complimentary, containing state-
ments such as: "He is well respected in his field." Segment 4 was somewhat in
defense of the professor.
244 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY
Procedure
Subjects were told that they would be participating in an experiment on
"
The things that people say to themselves, " and that the interests of the exper-
i menter were the thoughts and feelings people have in a variety of situations.
The experiment took place in a sound-proofed laboratory containing a com-
fortable armchair with ultrasensitive stereo microphones on either side to re-
cord subjects' comments, a pair of high-fidelity stereo speakers for presenting
the recorded situations, and a desk for completing questionnaires. The experi-
menter sat in a separate control room that contained a reel-to-reel tape re-
corder for playing the stimulus tapes and a precision cassette deck for record-
ing subjects ' responses.
A prerecorded cassette tape instructed subjects to listen to the tapes and to
i magine as clearly as they could that the event was actually occurring. They
were presented with a description of the situational context for the control
tape, asked to tune into their thoughts and feelings and to say those thoughts
aloud each time the tape stopped. Then the stress tape was presented, and sub-
jects' responses to this tape recorded. Subjects were exhorted to be as frank
and complete in their comments as possible. After articulating their thoughts
to both tapes, each subject completed the FNE and IBT. Watson and Friend
(1969) have presented evidence for the acceptable reliability and validity of
the FNE. The IBT has been used frequently in studies to measure cognitive
content (Merluzzi, et al., 1981; Woods, 1984; Woods & Coggin, 1985). Jones
(1969) has reported acceptable internal validity for this scale. Merluzzi, et al.,
however, have uncovered conflicting results in the literature and have sug-
gested that there is a need for further validation of the IBT.
RESULTS
Articulated Thoughts
The content analysis employed in the present experiment was vir-
tually identical to that used by Davison, Feldman, and Osborn
(1984). Each subject provided 14 thirty-second response segments, 7 to
the Stress tape and 7 to the Control. All segments were independently
scored directly from tape by two raters, undergraduates carefully
trained to detect the presence of each of Ellis's (1962) 10 Irrational Be-
liefs on a scale from 0 (not present) to 6 (extremely irrational). During
three training sessions, raters learned to content analyze subjects' ar-
ticulated thoughts. Raters were blind to subjects' scores on the FNE
and IBT measures as well as to whether subjects were controls or ther-
apy clients. To familiarize them with the ATSS procedures, raters were
themselves run through the experiment (exposed only to the instruc-
tions and tapes, but not asked to fill out questionnaires). The data thus
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM 245 246 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY

collected were used as material for training and then coded conjointly Table 1
by the raters and experimenter during the training sessions. Following
these sessions, the two raters proceeded to code the subjects' data. Means and Standard Deviations of Sum Irrational Beliefs
Each rater worked separately on the same material. Raters coded all Scores (SIB)
response segments of each subject before proceeding on to the next
subject.
'
Raters looked for implied endorsement of Ellis s irrational beliefs in Average of Raters
' articulated thoughts. A Sum Irrational Beliefs (SIB) score was
subjects Simulated Situation
then computed for each subject on each stimulus tape by adding to- Neutral Stress
gether the 10 Irrational Beliefs scores for all 7 tape segments. There- Controls 14.99 39.63
fore, every subject received from each rater a SIB score for the Control (SD = 12.22) (SD = 11.901
tape and another one for the Stress tape. In this fashion we hoped to Subjects
capture the essence of a subject's irrationality as defined by Ellis. Therapy Clients 27.0 46.37
Because assessing the degree of irrationality of subjects' responses (SD = 11.92) (SD = 10.43)
requires a degree of inference, reliability of scoring is important. Corre- Rater 1
lations were computed for the Sum Irrational Beliefs scores assigned to Simulated Situation
the Stress tape and to the Control tape by the two raters. rX ~ for the Neutral Stress
Stress tape was + .76, and for the Control, + .96. Both Pearson coeffi- Controls 16.47 46.6
cients are highly significant (p < .001). (SD 12.95) (SD = 14.18)
Table 1 contains the means and standard deviations of the sums of 10 Subjects
Irrational Beliefs scores (:SIB) for therapy clients and control subjects as Therapy Clients 27.5 50.0
–
they listened to neutral and stressful tapes, separately by each rater as (SD = 12.39) (SD 11.76)
well as by their average. A 2 x 2 ANOVA with a repeated measures Rater 2
within-subjects factor of Condition (control vs. stress tape) and a be- Simulated Situation
tween-subjects factor of Group (therapy clients vs. control subjects) per- Neutral Stress
formed on the SIB scores showed significant main effects for the within- Controls 13.53 32.66
subjects (p < .001) and between-subjects factor (p < .01) for the average (SD = 11.61 (SD = 10.49)
of Rater 1 and Rater 2, see Table 2. These findings hold for Rater 1 and Subjects
Rater 2 separately as well. No significant interaction effects were Therapy Clients 26.5 42.75
found. (SD = 11.95) (SD = 11.27)
Thus, therapy clients with social anxiety articulated overall more ir-
rational thoughts than did controls, an encouraging finding because it
represents our first demonstration of a significant between-group dif- segments. The use of ANOVA to analyze these scores is thus appro-
ference in an ATSS experiment. Secondly, subjects overall articulated priate.
more irrational thoughts to the stress than to the control tape, a finding
that replicates our two previous studies. Personality Measures
It should be noted that although therapy clients were drawn from a
highly restricted population (therapy clients who met the threefold cri- Table 3 contains the means and standard deviations of IBT and FNE
teria mentioned above), it can be assumed (due to the central limit theo- scores for therapy clients and control subjects. Student t-tests to assess
rem) that their SIB summary scores approach normality, since these the significance of the difference between the means of the scores of the
scores were based on the sums of 10 Irrational Beliefs scores for all 7
 247 248 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM

Table 2 Table 3
j
Repeated Measures ANOVA Performed on Means and Standard Deviations of IBT and FNE Scores
Sum Irrational Beliefs Scores

IBT FNE,
Sources of Variation df MS F Probability
295.33 16.47
Average ofRater 1 Controls
(SD = 28.02) (SD = 6.98)
and Rater 2
Group (Therapy clients vs 1 916.3 8.41 <.O1
293.37 20.37
Control Subjects) Therapy Clients
Condition (Neutral vs 1 5052.34 29.96 <.001 (SD = 43.37) (SD = 6.43)
Stress tapes)
Group by Condition 1 72.13 0.43 .52
Rater 1
Group 1 543.44 4.23 .05 DISCUSSION
Condition 1 7226.78 33.7 <.001
Group by Condition 1 152.0 0.7 .41 This study compared the articulated thoughts emitted by a group of
Rater 2 socially anxious therapy clients with those emitted by a control group
Group 1 1386.0 12.54 <.002 of unselected college students. Articulated thoughts of the two groups
Condition 1 3266.03 22.9 <.001 were analyzed for amount of irrationality. For each subject on each sim-
Group by Condition 21.68 0.15 .70
ulated situation tape, a Sum Irrational Beliefs Score was computed, re-
flecting the degree to which each subject was thinking irrationally
while exposed to a stressful tape and to a neutral tape.
two subject groups on the FNE and IBT scales and on the 10 IBT sub- Results of this study confirmed those of our two previous experiments
scales revealed no significant differences between the two groups on ( Davison et al., 1983; Davison et al., 1984) in that subjects articulated
any of the scales. more irrational thoughts when confronted with a stressful social-
evaluative situation than with one not involving criticism of them-
Power of Tests selves. These findings suggest that when people find themselves in
socially stressful situations, they tend to produce more irrational
To determine whether the size of our sample had an effect on the re- thoughts than when the situation they are in is not socially stressful.
sults, power calculatons based on means and standard deviations of the Second, and more important for the purposes of the present study, re-
IBT and FNE scores in this study were performed for Type I and Type II sults showed that individuals who tended to feel anxious in social situa-
error = .05. Results showed that for the IBT, a minimum of 1247 sub- tions expressed more irrational thoughts than did controls, providing
jects would have been needed to reach a statistically significant rejec- evidence for the existence of between-subject differences not found in
tion of the null hypothesis. For the FNE, however, a sample of only 12 our two previous studies using this paradigm.
subjects would have sufficed for significance. Although the results Although we did not find a significant interaction in our ANOVA on
strongly state no significant difference between therapy clients and Sum Irrational Beliefs scores and status of subjects by type of tape, an
control subjects for FNE and IBT measures, FNE may have failed to inspection of Table 1 suggested that the main effect for the Subjects fac-
show significance in this study because of insufficient sample size. tor may be due primarily to the means in the Neutral tape condition. In
a purely exploratory spirit we conducted a posteriori t-tests on these
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM 249
means and found that the neutral tape occasioned greater irrationality
for the clinical than for the control subjects. For the SIB scores from the
average of the two raters, this difference (14.99 versus 27.0) is signifi-
cant at the .038 level, two-tailed test; the pattern is the same, as might
be expected, when the scores from each rater individually are used. No
significance is achieved in the stressful tape condition. What this might
mean is that socially anxious individuals think more irrationally than
controls in nonstressful social situations, suggesting that they may dif-
fer from normals not so much in how they construe stressful situations
as in how they distort essentially innocuous ones. Given that most peo-
ple's lives are constituted of the latter type, this may help account for
the generalized unhappiness of such people.
Recall that the earlier ATSS studies employed analogue subjects
based on their scores on personality measures: the FNE, that measures
the tendency to be fearful of negative evaluation, and the IBT, that
measures the tendency to think irrationally. While the first study
( Davison et al., 1983) used a median split approach to form the groups,
the second study (Davison et al., 1984) used an extreme groups ap-
proach (top and bottom third). Based on a cognitive perspective that as-
sumes that thought patterns should be different for groups of indivi-
duals who are sufficiently different in personality trait measures, it
seemed logical in the two previous studies to expect between-subject
differences. However, only the present study showed between-subject
(therapy clients vs. controls) differences in patterns of articulated
thoughts. Researchers have raised questions about the relevance of
analogues in clinical research (Bernstein & Paul, 1971; Borkovec &
O'Brien, 1976). The mildness of the symptomatology of the subjects
studied in our first two experiments may have underlain the lack of
differences.
The absence of significant differences on IBT and FNE scores be-
tween the two groups in the present study indicates that while individ-
uals judged by their respective therapists to be socially anxious thought
more irrationally as revealed in their articulated thoughts, they did not
appear this way on either of these questionnaire measures. A possible
explanation is that the demand characteristics of the experimental sit-
uation may have affected the two groups of subjects differently and
thereby influenced responses to questionnaire items. Because of their
tendency to experience anxiety in social situations, the subjects who
were in therapy may have been concerned with the experimenter's
opinions of them. Additionally, these subjects may have been exposed
in their therapy to the idea of irrationality as related to their social
250 JOURNAL OF RATIONAL-EMOTIVE THERAPY
anxieties; they may have therefore been more able to detect irrational-
ity in the questionnaire items than were subjects in the control groups.
Our therapy clients may also have been less willing than controls to ad-
mit their tendency to think irrationally and to be sensitive to negative
evaluation when asked to endorse IBT and FNE questionnaire items.
However, when asked to imagine themselves in the ATSS situation and
to report their thoughts on the spot, these subjects may have been less
able to assess irrationality in their spontaneous internal dialogue and
then to conceal it. The ATSS paradigm may thus be a more sensitive
method of detecting differences in thought patterns than questionnaire
measures such as the IBT or FNE. That such is the case has been the
guiding assumption of our ATSS research (see, for example, Davison, et
al., 1983, pp. 20-22).'
The results of the present study indicate differences in the thought
patterns of therapy clients with social anxiety and control subjects.
Finding differences with a sample as small as the one used in this study
is particularly encouraging. Nonetheless, because of the small size of
the clinical sample, further research is needed to corroborate these
findings.
Moreover, research should employ a multimethod assessment ap-
proach as has been advocated for some time in the clinical asessment
literature (Campbell & Fiske, 1959). For example, the findings re-
ported here for the ATSS paradigm should be related to other methods
of cognitive assessment, such as the Dysfunctional Thoughts Record
employed by Beck and his associates (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery,
1979), the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire of Hollon and Kendall
(1980), the thought-listing technique of Cacioppo et al., (1979), and
other procedures for discovering what is on people's minds as they nego-
tiate their way in life. In addition, cognitive-behavioral researchers
should not forget their behavioral roots. It will be important and infor-
mative to examine as well the relationships between think-aloud data
and actual behavior. As useful as it will be to discover positive relation-
ships, however, we should keep in mind that of interest will also be dis-
crepancies among topographically different measures of what is pre-
sumably the same construct (Lazarus, 1966; Lang, 1968).
Articulated Thoughts and Cognition
A fundamental question concerns the relationship of what people
can and do report to what they actually think and feel. Cognitive-
behavioral people like Ellis and Beck sometimes seem to assume that
GERALD C. DAVISON AND VIVIEN ZIGHELBOIM 251
this relationship is simple and direct, as if thought is covert talking.
This equation of cognition with self-talk is part of the legacy of
mediational behaviorism, which can be traced back to metatheoretical
progenitors like Mowrer (1939), and Dollard and Miller (1950). The
relationship, however, is undoubtedly much more complex. Some
thoughts occur in a preverbal form and some in nonverbal modes
such as imagery. The subject is faced with the task of translating these
thoughts and feelings into words; this verbalizing process likely affects
the content or form of the thoughts and feelings (Pope, 1977). Indeed,
some ideational affect perhaps cannot even be approximated by lan-
guage, or the language available to a particular subject. Of course, the
likelihood that not all thoughts can be expressed does not mean that
none can. Thus, our paradigm explores articulated thoughts, those that
the subject can and/or will put in some verbal form. While this is cer-
tainly not all of cognition, it would seem to represent a substantial and
clinically important part of it.
NOTE
1. It might be argued that there is something wrong with our clinical sample
because their FNE and IBT scores do not differ from those of our control
subjects. Counterargument takes several forms. First, as noted earlier in
the manuscript, the IBT has not gone uncriticized in the literature. Second,
to assert that these questionnaires SHOULD discriminate between our two
subject groups is to elevate them to the status of a standard against which
newer assessment procedures, like the ATSS, are to be measured; we be-
lieve it is premature to do so. Finally, as just noted in the running text, the
ATSS approaches the assessment of cognition in a way that is fundamen-
tally different from most other cognitive assessment procedures, especially
self-report questionnaires. At this juncture, it would seem imprudent to in-
sist that ATSS findings map perfectly onto those derived from other assess-
ment devices, regardless of their prior use in the literature.
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