Responding to Negative Internal Experience: Relationships Between Acceptance and Change-Based Approaches and Psychological Adjustment

The authors examined the relationships between change-based and acceptance-based strategies for responding to negative internal experience (thoughts and emotions) and levels of psychological symptoms and well-being. A large sample of undergraduate students completed measures of their general frequency of experiencing negative affect and intrusive thoughts, their typical ways of responding when these experiences occur, and their levels of psychological symptoms and well-being. Correlational analyses showed that most of the identified ways of responding to negative internal experiences were significantly related to psychological symptoms and well-being, even after accounting for the general frequency of experiencing unwanted thoughts and emotions. Regression analyses suggested that change-based ways of responding add little or no incremental variance over acceptance-based strategies in accounting for lower symptom levels and greater well-being.