Behavioral experiments
A behavioral experiment is a planned test of a belief. You write down what you expect will happen, do something to find out, and compare the result with your prediction. The point is to learn something, not to prove you're fine, and it doesn't count as a failure if you felt anxious while you did it.
Taking the thought out of the notebook
A thought record weighs a thought on paper. A behavioral experiment takes it outside and sees what happens. The Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy, edited by James Bennett-Levy and colleagues in 2004, is a full handbook on them.1
Hannah Murray and Sharif El-Leithy, who use them in trauma therapy, describe them as a wide range of activities with one main goal: learning something new.2 They also draw a clear line with exposure therapy. Exposure was built on the idea that fear fades with time in the situation. A behavioral experiment aims to test a belief, and any drop in fear along the way is a side effect.2
- The belief: "If I say no to extra work, my manager will be angry." Believed 80 out of 100.
- The prediction: She'll reply sharply or bring it up in our next meeting.
- The experiment: On Tuesday I'll decline one extra task politely, without a long apology.
- What happened: She wrote "No problem, I'll ask Dan." Nothing came up at the meeting.
- What I learned: Saying no once didn't make her angry. One test isn't every test.
- Rate again: Believed 45.
A free behavioral experiment worksheet prints on one page.
How to set one up
- Pick one belief and rate it. Write it in your words, and rate how much you believe it from 0 to 100.
- Turn it into a prediction you could see. "They'll think I'm stupid" can't be observed. "Someone will laugh or roll their eyes" can.
- Plan the test. What will you do, when and where? Make it small enough to do this week.
- Plan to drop your safety behaviors, if you can. These are the things you do to stop the feared outcome, like over-preparing or avoiding eye contact. They can make it impossible to learn what would have happened anyway.
- Do it, and write what happened right away. Stick to what you saw and heard, not what you guessed people thought.
- Compare and re-rate. How did the result fit your prediction? What did you learn? Rate the belief again.
Padesky noted that good questioning often leads a person to design their own experiment.3 The Socratic questions page has a few to start with.
Four kinds of test
The examples are written for this page.
Test the prediction directly
Do the thing you expect to go badly, and watch what happens.
"I'll ask one question at book club and count how many people react badly."
Drop a safety behavior
Do something you already do, but without the habit you use to feel safe, and compare.
"I'll give the toast at my sister's birthday without reading from notes, and see whether I lose my place."
Survey other people
Ask people you trust what they think, to test what you believe others think.
"I'll ask three friends: if someone cancelled plans because they were tired, would you think less of them?"
Murray and El-Leithy list surveys of other people's opinions as one of their tools.2
Observe
Watch what happens to other people, or in the world, to test a belief.
"I'll notice how many people at the gym look at anyone else for more than a second."
Anxious during the test is allowed
Expect to feel anxious before and during the test. It doesn't mean the test is failing. The 2014 exposure guidance from Michelle Craske and colleagues doesn't treat fear going down during the task as the sign of success.4 What drives new learning is the gap between what you expected and what happened.4
You may also notice the urge to explain the result away: "It only went OK because she was in a good mood." Write that down as a new prediction, and test it again.
Experiment against thought record, head to head
One study has put the two side by side. Freda McManus and colleagues randomly gave 91 adults one session of a thought record, a behavioral experiment or a control task, and both active methods beat the control on belief, anxiety and behavior.5
Belief changed sooner with the experiment, and the change spread further, to beliefs about other people. The authors called it a small advantage.5
The participants weren't patients, and it was a single session.5
The surprise is what teaches
Craske and colleagues describe the mismatch between what a person expects and what happens as critical for new learning in exposure.4 A specific, written prediction matters for that reason. Without one, there's nothing to be surprised by.
That leads to an odd piece of advice: don't argue yourself out of the prediction first. Craske's team suggests that talking down the fear beforehand, with lines like "it's not so bad to be rejected", may weaken the learning by shrinking the surprise, so they moved that kind of talk to after the exposure.4
Safety behaviors can block the learning too. Among 8 people with social anxiety, exposure while dropping safety behaviors reduced anxiety more than exposure alone.6 It was a small study.
A worry can be the belief you test. Writing a prediction and a check date is a simple experiment, and the worry time page shows what happened when people with generalized anxiety disorder logged their worries for 10 days and checked them.
When to do this with a professional
Don't design an experiment that could hurt you, such as driving while panicky or stopping medication. For fears tied to trauma, panic, OCD or health, plan experiments with a CBT therapist, who can put them in a safe order.
Write one belief that holds you back, as a prediction someone could see happen. What's one small thing you could do this week to test it, and what would tell you the prediction was wrong?
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask
Can you give an example of a behavioral experiment?
Someone believes "If I don't reply to messages right away, people will be annoyed." They wait two hours to reply to five messages, then note how many people mention it. They compare that with their prediction.
What if the experiment goes badly?
Then you've learned something real. Look at what happened, how you coped and what you'd do next time. A bad result on one test isn't proof the belief was right everywhere.
Related
- CBT worksheets: a free behavioral experiment worksheet to print.
- Cognitive restructuring: checking a thought on paper first.
- Thought record: the one-page way to look at a thought.