Cognitive-behavioral treatment of high anger drivers

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Abstract

Relaxation and cognitive-relaxation interventions were compared to a no treatment control in the treatment of high anger drivers. The cognitive portion of the cognitive-relaxation condition adapted the style of Beck's cognitive therapy, particularly use of Socratic questions and behavioral experiments and tryouts, to driving anger reduction. Both interventions lowered indices of driving anger and hostile and aggressive forms of expressing driving anger and increased adaptive/constructive ways of expressing driving anger. The cognitive-relaxation intervention also lowered the frequency of risky behavior. Both interventions lowered trait anger as well. Limitations and implications for treatment and research were discussed.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants (Mdn age=19) were 55 (28 men, 27 women) introductory psychology students who scored in the upper quartile (scores >52) on the short-form of the Driving Anger Scale (DAS; Deffenbacher, Oetting, & Lynch, 1994) and who indicated a personal problem with driving anger and a desire for counseling for that problem. Sixty-three potential participants were identified from screening, but four declined participation citing scheduling problems and two simply could not be contacted. The final

Manipulation and fidelity checks

A MANOVA on ratings of therapist interest in group members, clarity of communication, and communication of positive expectancies for treatments (Table 1) revealed no multivariate treatment effects, F(3,26)=0.11, suggesting no differences between treatments on these manipulation checks. RCS and CRCS clients perceived therapists as highly interested in group members, communicating clearly, and expressing positive expectancies for the effectiveness of interventions. A MANOVA on ratings of

Discussion

Both relaxation and cognitive-relaxation interventions led to reductions on multiple measures of driving anger, including the frequency of anger in day-to-day driving. Active treatments also increased adaptive and constructive expression and reduced hostile and aggressive expression of anger while driving, although only CRCS maintained reduction of hostile/aggressive expression of driving anger at one-month follow-up. CRCS also lowered the frequency of risky behavior as found previously (

Acknowledgements

This study was supported, in part, by Grant R49/CCR8 11509-04 from the Centers for Disease Control and Grants R01 DA04777 and P50 DA07074 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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