Abstract

There has been a recent explosion of interest in experiential avoidance as a source of human psychopathology and acceptance-based interventions as a means of combating the deleterious effects of such avoidance. Most of this work has focused on clinical outcome measures, but a small body of research has also employed experimental analogs. The first part of the current article reviews the key studies in this analog research and concludes that the results support the argument that acceptance interventions provide some possible advantages over more traditional control- or distraction-based interventions. The second part of the article provides the beginnings of a technical analysis of acceptance in terms of Relational Frame Theory, a modern behavioral approach to human language and cognition.