The efficacy of Rational Emotive Therapy in adults: clinical fact or psychometric artifact?

doi:10.1016/0005-7916(92)90020-J

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

Volume 23, Issue 1, March 1992, Pages 9-24

https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7916(92)90020-J Get rights and content

Abstract

The efficacy of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) in reducing maladjustment, while insistently touted by its advocates, has not been unambiguously demonstrated in outcome research. Previous reviews have generally been quite partisan and subjective, and have not reflected available research. The object of the present review was to determine the extent to which RET significantly improved adjustment of adult subjects on different outcome measures in comparison with wait-list, placebo, and other treatment conditions. In 75 outcome reports, RET was effective in only about 25% of comparisons. Its main effect was to reduce scores of self-reported irrationality and dysphoria. Little change was noted in behavioral measures. The few comparisons favoring RET could be attributed to psychometric artifacts rather than to the reduction of irrational beliefs.

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The efficacy of Rational Emotive Therapy in adults: clinical fact or psychometric artifact?

Abstract

Rational emotive therapy vs systematic desensitization: A comment on Moleski and Tose

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Cognitive and autonomic group procedures with speech anxious children

Dissertation Abstracts International

Depression

Rational emotive therapy with children and adolescents

Psychometric properties of the survey of personal beliefs: a rational emotive measure of irrational thinking

Journal of Personality Assessment

A behavioral approach to RET with children

Rational Living

A comparison of the relative effectiveness of systematic desensitization, rational emotive and client-centered group psychotherapy in the reduction of interpersonal anxiety in introverts and extroverts

Dissertation Abstracts International

Rational-emotive therapy

The basic clinical therapy of rational emotive therapy

Rational-emotive therapy: Research data that support the clinical and personality hypotheses of RET and other modes of cognitive-behavior therapy

Counseling Psychologist

Conceptual thinking and the criminal personality

Journal of Counseling and Development

The treatment of agoraphobia: a comparison of self-instructional training, rational emotive therapy, and exposure in vivo

Behavior Modification

Test your rationality

Rational Living

Ability to discriminate rational responses to items on the Irrational Belief Test as a predictor of rationality and trait anxiety

Psychological Reports

Efficacy of rational emotive therapy (RET) with children

Efficacy of rational-emotive-therapy (RET) with children: fact or artifact?

Irrational beliefs and maladjustment: When are psychometric effects clinically meaningful?