A comparison of response exaggeration techniques.
Compared the effectiveness of several response exaggeration techniques. Socially anxious college males (N = 34) were instructed to exaggerate some component of social anxiety onset. One group exaggerated their attending to manifestations of their anxiety, two groups exaggerated either a relevant or irrelevant anxiety response, a fourth group imagined an exaggerated consequence of their anxiety, and a fifth group served as a placebo control. All groups reported a greater willingness to initiate and maintain an interaction with a female and displayed less anxiety in a role-playing situation; no differential treatment effects were found. These findings fail to support results from other studies that attested to the efficacy of response exaggeration techniques.
D001007:Anxiety / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D007171:Implosive Therapy; D008297:Male; D012917:Social Adjustment