Date of Award

Fall 1979

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Glenn R. Caddy

Committee Member

Raymond H. Kirby

Committee Member

Glynn D. Coates

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65K63

Abstract

Twenty acrophobics recruited from the community and 11 undergraduate student acrophobics were assigned randomly to either a stimulus flooding condition or a placebo control condition.

Initially, care was taken to ensure that the treatments were not significantly different on the dimensions of treatment credibility and generated expectancy for improvement. Additional

measures of expectancy for improvement and treatment believability were taken during and after treatment. Results indicated that neither treatment was significantly different on any of the expectancy measures or on behavioral and self'-report measures of outcome performance. Furthermore, subjects' belief in the efficacy of treatment was significantly correlated with improvement on the outcome measures. In a separate analysis of the data obtained from student and nonstudent subjects, it was found that only nonstudents responded differentially to treatment. The need to employ experimental procedures controlling for equality of treatment credibility and generated expectancy for improvement in studies examining the effectiveness of flooding therapy and the implications for differing response to treatment for different subject populations are discussed.

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DOI

10.25777/raz6-ff55

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