Abstract
A key aspect of self-forgiveness is that one needs to acknowledge one’s failings and their consequences. The present study used the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and an explicit IRAP analog measure to examine (1) responding to perceived failure following exposure to an insoluble task, and (2) the effect of a defusion intervention on responding in this context. Participants (n = 29) were first assessed for baseline performance on an IRAP and IRAP analog that assessed participants in terms of perceived relations between performance (success vs. failure) and feelings (positive vs. negative). They were then exposed to the insoluble task, after which they were asked to report on their performance and their feelings in relation to the task. They were subsequently assigned to hear either a defusion (n = 14) or control (n = 15) audio recording and were reexposed to the implicit and explicit measures. IRAP results showed significant denial of failure as leading to positive feelings for both groups following the insoluble task, whereas the explicit (IRAP analog) measure failed to show any comparable effect of this task. As regards the defusion intervention, no effect was seen at the implicit level whereas effects at the explicit level were ambiguous. Results and future directions are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Stewart, I., & Boles, S. (2010). A sketch of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and the Relational Elaboration and Coherence (REC) model. The Psychological Record, 60(3), 527.
Bast, D. F., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2014). A first test of the implicit relational assessment procedure as a measure of forgiveness of self and others. The Psychological Record, 64(2), 253–260.
Bast, D. F., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2015a). Developing the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) as a measure of self-forgiveness related to failing and succeeding behaviors. The Psychological Record, 65(1), 189–201.
Bast, D. F., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2015b). Priming thoughts of failing versus succeeding and performance on the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a measure of self-forgiveness. The Psychological Record, 65(4), 667–678.
Bast, D. F., Linares, I. M. P., Gomes, C., Kovac, R., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2016). The implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) as a measure of self-forgiveness: The impact of a training history in clinical behavior analysis. The Psychological Record, 66(1), 177–190.
Berens, N. M., & Hayes, S. C. (2007). Arbitrarily applicable comparative relations: Experimental evidence for relational operants. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 45–71.
Bodner, E., & Mikulincer, M. (1998). Learned helplessness and the occurrence of depressive-like and paranoid-like responses: The role of attentional focus. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74(4), 1010–1023.
Bryan, A. O., Theriault, J. L., & Bryan, C. J. (2015). Self-forgiveness, posttraumatic stress, and suicide attempts among military personnel and veterans. Traumatology, 21(1), 40–46.
Cassidy, S., Roche, B., & Hayes, S. C. (2011). A relational frame training intervention to raise intelligence quotients: A pilot study. The Psychological Record, 61(2), 173–198.
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 349–354.
Cullen, C., Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y. & Stewart, I. (2009). The implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) and the malleability of ageist attitudes. The Psychological Record, 59, 591-620.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276–302.
Ellett, L., & Chadwick, P. (2007). Paranoid cognitions, failure, and focus of attention in college students. Cognition & Emotion, 21(3), 558–576. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930600758155.
Finn, M., Barnes-Holmes, P. M., & McEnteggart, C. (2018). Exploring the single-trial-type-dominance-effect in the IRAP: Developing a differential arbitrarily applicable relational responding effects (DAARRE) model. The Psychological Record, 68(1), 11–25.
Foody, M., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Luciano, C. (2013). An empirical investigation of hierarchical versus distinction relations in a self-based ACT exercise. International Journal of Psychology & Psychological Therapy, 13(3), 373–388.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. K. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74, 1464–1480.
Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85(2), 197–216.
Gueta, K. (2013). Self-forgiveness in the recovery of Israeli drug-addicted mothers: A qualitative exploration. Journal of Drug Issues, 21(1), 33–42.
Hall, J. H., & Fincham, F. D. (2005). Self-forgiveness: The stepchild of forgiveness research. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 24(5), 621–637.
Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (2001). Relational frame theory: A Post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Healy, O., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Smeets, P. M. (2001). Derived relational responding as generalized operant behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 74, 207–227.
Hiroto, D. S., & Seligman, M. E. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 31(2), 311–327.
Hoyt, W. T., & McCullough, M. E. (2005). Issues in the multimodal measurement of forgiveness. In E. L. Worthington Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of forgiveness (pp. 109–124). New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Hughes, S., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2016). Relational Frame Theory: The basic account. In S. Hayes, D. Barnes-Holmes, R. Zettle, & T. Biglan (Eds.), Handbook of contextual behavioral science. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hughes, S., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Vahey, N. (2012). Holding on to our functional roots when exploring new intellectual islands: A voyage through implicit cognition research. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 1(1–2), 17–38.
Hussey, I., Thompson, M., McEnteggart, C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Barnes-Holmes, Y. (2015). Interpreting and inverting with less cursing: A guide to interpreting IRAP data. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 4(3), 157–162.
Jones, E. E., & Sigall, H. (1971). The bogus pipeline: A new paradigm for measuring affect and attitude. Psychological Bulletin, 76(5), 349–364.
Kishita, N., Muto, T., Otsuki, T., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2014). Measuring the effect of cognitive defusion using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure: An experimental analysis with a highly socially anxious sample. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3(1), 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2013.12.001.
Luciano, C., Ruiz, F. J., Vizcaíno-Torres, R. M., Sánchez-Martín, V., Gutiérrez-Martínez, O., & López-López, J. C. (2011). A relational frame analysis of defusion interactions in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. A preliminary and quasi-experimental study with at-risk adolescents. International Journal of Psychology & Psychological Therapy, 11, 165–182.
Luoma, J. B., Hayes, S. C., & Walser, R. D. (2007). Learning ACT: An Acceptance & Commitment Therapy skills-training manual for therapists. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
Macaskill, A. (2012). Differentiating dispositional self-forgiveness from other-forgiveness: Associations with mental health and life satisfaction. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 31, 1, 28-50.
McGaffin, B. J., Lyons, G. C., & Deane, F. P. (2013). Self-forgiveness, shame, and guilt in recovery from drug and alcohol problems. Substance Abuse, 34(4), 396–404.
Mudgal, S., & Tiwari, G. K. (2015). Self-forgiveness and life satisfaction in people living with HIV/AIDS. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 3(110), 2348–5396.
Ross, S. R., Kendall, A. C., Matters, K. G., Wrobel, T. A., & Rye, M. S. (2004). A personological examination of self- and other-forgiveness in the five-factor model. Journal of Personality Assessment, 2, 207–214.
Sternthal, M. J., Williams, D. R., Musick, M. A., & Buck, A. C. (2010). Depression, anxiety, and religious life: A search for mediators. Journal of Health & Social Behavior, 51(3), 343–359.
Stewart, I. (2016). The fruits of a functional approach for psychological science. International Journal of Psychology, 51(1), 15–27.
Stewart, I., & Roche, B. (2013). Relational Frame Theory: An overview. In S. Dymond & B. Roche (Eds.), Advances in relational frame theory: Research and application. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
Takaku, S. (2001). The effects of apology and perspective-taking on interpersonal forgiveness: A dissonance-attribution model of interpersonal forgiveness. Journal of Social Psychology, 141(4), 494–508.
Vahey, N. A., Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & Stewart, I. (2009). A first test of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a measure of self-esteem: Irish prisoner groups and university students. The Psychological Record, 59, 371–388.
Wenzel, M., Woodyatt, L., & Heydrick, K. (2012). No genuine self-forgiveness without accepting responsibility: Value reaffirmation as a key to maintaining positive self-regard. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 617–627.
Wilson, T., Milosevic, A., Carroll, M., Hart, K., & Hibbard, S. (2008). Physical health status in relation to self-forgiveness and other-forgiveness in healthy college students. Journal of Health Psychology, 13(6), 798–803.
Wilson, T. D., & Dunn, E. W. (2004). Self- knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 493–518.
Woodyatt, L., Everett, L., Worthington, M. W., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). Orientation to the psychology of self-forgiveness. In L. Woodyatt, E. L. Worthington, M. Wenzel, & B. J. Griffin (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness. New York, NY: Springer International.
Woodyatt, L., Worthington, M. W., Wenzel, M., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness. New York, NY: Springer International.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This paper was written with the aid of a FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation) grant awarded to the first author.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ferroni-Bast, D., Fitzpatrick, J., Stewart, I. et al. Using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a Measure of Reaction to Perceived Failure and the Effects of a Defusion Intervention in this Context. Psychol Rec 69, 551–563 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-019-00349-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-019-00349-2