Experiential avoidance as a common psychological process in European cultures
Open accessAbstract
Abstract. Experiential avoidance, the tendency to rigidly escape or avoid private psychological experiences, represents one of the most prominent transdiagnostic psychological processes with a known role in a wide variety of psychological disorders and practical contexts. Experiential avoidance is argued to be based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process: an overextension of verbal problem solving into the world within. Although cultures apparently differ in their patterns of emotional expression, to the extent that experiential avoidance is based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process, measures of this process should be comparable across countries, with similar relationships to health outcomes regardless of the language community. This research tests this view in European countries. The psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II, a measure of experiential avoidance, are compared across six languages and seven European countries, for a total of 2,170 nonclinical participants. Multiple group analysis showed that the instrument can be considered invariant across the language samples. The questionnaire constitutes a unidimensional instrument with similar relationships to psychopathology, and has good and very similar psychometric properties in each assessed country. Experiential avoidance reveals not just as transdiagnostic, but also as a transcultural process independent of a specific language community.
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Psychological inflexibility is considered not only as a transdiagnostic process but also as a transcultural process independent of a specific language community.
“Psychological inflexibility is considered not only as a transdiagnostic process but also as a transcultural process independent of a specific language community (Monestès et al., 2016).”
From Exploring the impact of carer stressors and psychological inflexibility on depression and anxiety in family carers of people with dementia (2020) · cites this paper as Monestès et al., 2016
The Discussion (page not available) describes experiential avoidance as a transdiagnostic factor and reports similar AAQ-II properties across six languages in seven European countries. It does not establish that psychological inflexibility as a whole is independent of language community; it calls for further study of non-European samples. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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“Experiential avoidance is a core process of PI, representing one’s attempt to prevent the experience of unpleasant emotions and/or physical sensations at the expense of general well-being [26].”
Background
- Authors
- Monestès, J.-L., Karekla, M., Jacobs, N., Michaelides, M. P., Hooper, N., Kleen, M., Ruiz, F. J., Miselli, G., Presti, G., Luciano, C., Villatte, M., Bond, F. W., Kishita, N., & Hayes, S. C.
- Affiliations
- Université Grenoble Alpes (FR)
- University of Cyprus (CY)
- Hasselt University (BE)
- University of the West of England (GB)
- GGZ Drenthe (NL)
- Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz (CO)
- Istituti Ospitalieri di Cremona (IT)
- Università degli Studi di Enna Kore (IT)
- University of Almería (ES)
- Evidence Based Practice Institute, Seattle, WA, USA
- University of London (GB)
- University of East Anglia (GB)
- University of Nevada, Reno (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- European Journal of Psychological Assessment
- Publisher
- Hogrefe Publishing Group
- Published
- 2018-07
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 247-257
- ISSN
- 1015-5759 (ISSN-L)
- 2151-2426
- OpenAlex
- W2301306286
- Cited by
- 71
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 12.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- eprints.uwe.ac.uk
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- European Journal of Psychological Assessment (publishedVersion)
- UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Document Server@UHasselt (UHasselt) (submittedVersion)
- UWE Research Repository (UWE Bristol) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- experiential avoidance, Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II, cross-cultural psychology, cross-cultural invariance, transdiagnostic mechanisms, psychometric properties, European languages, psychopathology
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