2010 Volume 17 Issue 3 Pages 169-179
Worry is perseverative negative thinking about what may happen in the future. In this study, we examined the effects of cognitive behaviour intervention focused on metacognitive beliefs about worry, on alleviating worry in Japanese university students with high trait worry scores. Metacognitive be-liefs about worry refer to the beliefs that individuals have about their own worries, such as beliefs about the natures and functions of their own worries.
In study I, we administered cognitive-behavioural psychoeducation to high worriers, with a fo-cus on metacognitive beliefs about worry. As a result, individuals who received the psychoeducation (n=13) were less anxious than the placebo intervention group (n=10) at a worry-provoking task.
In study II, eighteen high worriers served as subjects. They were assigned to either a self-instructional training (SIT; n=9) group focusing on metacognition or a waiting list control (WLC; n=9) group. As a result, SIT produced a signi.cantly larger treatment effect on modifying negative metacognitive beliefs about worry. In addition SIT was superior to waiting-list control, in yielding improvements on worry related measures.
These results show that modi.cation of negative metacognitive beliefs about worry has the effect of alleviating trait worry. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results were discussed.
