Dryden W, Dancey C, Goldsmith P
Psychol Rep. 1990 Jun;66(3 Pt 1):803-9. doi: 10.2466/pr0.1990.66.3.803.
96 university students were asked to imagine that they were suffering from study anxiety to the point of wishing to receive help with the problem. They were then asked to read a booklet detailing either (a) the rationale for systematic desensitization or Rational-Emotive Therapy and (b) told that counselling lasted for 5 or 15 weeks. They then assessed the credibility of the therapy using Borkovec's credibility rating method. Meta-analysis has shown that systematic desensitization has superior outcomes when compared to other treatments, but this could be attributed to the different expectations of benefit that the therapies arouse. This notion has been called the expectancy-arousal hypothesis. Results from the present experiment did not support Shapiro's 1981 findings that systematic desensitization was more credible than Rational-Emotive Therapy, which disconfirms the expectancy-arousal hypothesis, but the basis for this remains unclear.
96名大学生被要求想象自己因学习焦虑而希望得到帮助来解决这个问题。然后，他们被要求阅读一本小册子，详细介绍（a）系统脱敏疗法或理性情绪疗法的基本原理，以及（b）被告知咨询持续5周或15周。然后，他们使用博尔科维奇的可信度评级方法评估了该疗法的可信度。元分析表明，与其他治疗方法相比，系统脱敏疗法有更好的效果，但这可能归因于不同疗法所唤起的对益处的不同期望。这一概念被称为期望唤起假说。本实验的结果并不支持夏皮罗1981年的研究结果，即系统脱敏疗法比理性情绪疗法更可信，这与期望唤起假说相矛盾，但其依据尚不清楚。
