The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a Measure of Self-Forgiveness: The Impact of a Training History in Clinical Behavior Analysis

Abstract

The current study aimed to test the effect of behavior therapy training on the assessment of self-forgiveness, focusing on the feelings or outcomes that may be associated with failing and succeeding in everyday life, using 2 Implicit Relational Assessment Procedures (IRAPs) that had been developed across a series of previously published studies. Additionally, the research explored the extent to which responding on the IRAP correlated with standardized measures of psychopathology, including depression, anxiety, stress, and a scale that was based directly on the IRAP. Forty undergraduate and postgraduate students completed the study (20 individuals who were teaching on, attending, or who had attended a course in clinical behavior analysis and 20 students from different fields). The two groups (behavior therapists and nontherapists) completed the 2 IRAPs and the explicit measures. Overall, only 1 of the 2 IRAPs, the one that targeted feelings rather than outcomes, produced clear and significant differences between the behavior therapist and nontherapist groups. This result indicated that the diverging performances were specific to the stimuli that were presented in the IRAP rather than reflecting a generic between-group difference produced by the measure itself. Furthermore, both IRAPs predicted levels of self-reported psychopathology and self-compassion. A number of potential reasons why this pattern of results emerged using the 2 IRAPs and explicit measures with these 2 groups of participants are considered.