Experiential avoidance: Associations with psychopathology and quality of life

• Main Author: Gamez, Wakiza
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2009
• Subjects: Clinical psychology
• ISBN: 9781109338720; 1109338724

Experiential avoidance (EA) has been conceptualized as the tendency to avoid negative internal experiences and has been an important concept in numerous theories of psychotherapy. Some questions remain as to whether the avoidance of distress can be distinguished from the experience of distress and whether EA can provide explanatory power beyond the effects of general distress. Pre-existing measures of EA have either been narrowly defined, or have demonstrated questionable reliability and/or poor discriminant validity vis-à-vis neuroticism. Therefore, to help address these questions, a reliable, face valid, self-report questionnaire assessing a broad range of EA content that was distinguishable from higher order personality traits was developed. An initial item pool covering 6 broad avoidance dimensions (behaviors, thoughts, memories, emotions, physical sensations, and pain) were written. This initial item pool of 170 items was administered to a sample of undergraduates (N = 312) to help evaluate individual items and determine a preliminary structure via exploratory factor analyses. A revised set of items were then administered to another sample of undergraduates (N = 314) and a sample of psychiatric outpatients (N = 201). A second round of item evaluation was implemented, and a final measure consisting of 62 items emerged. The six resulting factors were named Distress Devaluation, Behavioral Avoidance, Distraction/Suppression, Repression/Denial, Procrastination, and Distress Tolerance. The new measure demonstrated good internal consistency and distinguished between student and patient samples. It was also substantially associated with other measures of avoidance and demonstrated distinction relative to neuroticism. The new measure was then used to examine the relative importance of EA in explaining psychopathology, quality of life, and functioning. Examination of these results suggested that EA was associated with each of these factors in both students and patients, even after controlling for the effects of neuroticism. Findings utilizing this new method of assessing EA support the idea that EA is an important factor in explaining negative sequelae and that individuals' relationships with their internal experiences and how they respond to them are at least as important as the experiences themselves.