The Relationship between Cognitive-Developmental Orientation and Irrational Belief of College Students

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between cognitive-developmental orientation and irrational belief of college students according to Ivey's Developmental Counseling and Therapy assumptions. Study 1 was conducted to constitute a revised version of irrational belief rating scale which was derived from Matsumura's Japanese Irrational Belief Test for the present study. One hundred and sixty-six college students were used for data collection of the study. Two factors, expectation and helplessness, were found by a factor analysis of 20 items which were selected from JIBT. Study 2 was conducted to examine a hypothesis that students who were rated as predominantly having orientations in cognitively higher level such as formal-operational and dialectic/systemic should have less irrational belief than students rated as predominantly having orientations at cognitively lower level such as sensori-motor and concrete-operatirnal. One hundred and six students participated as the subjects. The subject was asked to respond to two open questions about her/himself and a significant-other person for her/him. The subject was sorted to either one of sensori-motor, concrete, and formal orientations according to her/his response to the open questions. No subject was found to be in dialectic/systemic orientation. The results indicated that the subjects who were sorted as having formal orientation in self aspect were likely to show less irrational belief in expectation, and that no relationship between developmental orientation and irrational belief in the other aspect was found. These results were discussed in line with Ivey's assumption