Flexibility, Impulsivity, and Relational Responding: A study of the relationship between experiential avoidance, delaying of aversive outcomes, and brief immediate relational responding

Abstract The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a relatively new tool for assessing verbal behaviour, and shows promise in measuring verbal behaviour that participants may be unable to report otherwise. In this exploratory study, I sought to determine the relationship between responding as measured using the IRAP, a clinical measure of experiential avoidance, and impulsiveness. The first experiment was a first attempt to validate the use of the IRAP in a New Zealand sample by administering three IRAP tasks to undergraduate students. Results in the first experiment were consistent with past research and supported the validity of the IRAP in a New Zealand sample. In the second experiment, participants completed two IRAPs, the Action and Acceptance Questionnaire II, and an aversive delay discounting task. The first IRAP measured relational flexibility around gender roles, while the second measured relational flexibility around accepting and avoiding emotions. The results showed that more relational flexibility around gender chores predicted more self-control on the delay discounting task, and more experiential avoidance while more relational flexibility around emotions predicted more impulsiveness. My results from the second experiment represent one of the first attempts at linking the concepts of experiential avoidance, impulsiveness, and relational flexibility and as such my study is an important first step in understanding the relationship between these concepts