Effects of subjects' expectancy of experimenter's involvement on live and taped relaxation training

Progressive or deep muscle relaxation training has become an increasingly popular psychotherapeutic procedure. The usage of relaxation training has increased primarily because of the impressive success of treatment procedures utilizing such training. As the experimental and clinical use of relaxation increased, some of the procedures have been automated in order to facilitate standardization, decrease intrasession variability, and increase the effective use of the therapist's time. Although experimental and clinical studies utilizing automated procedures have been successful, the only research directly investigating the comparability of live and tape instruction procedures has indicated tape relaxation training to be inferior to live relaxation training. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of live and taped relaxation training on the reduction of physiological arousal (muscle tension, heart rate) and subjective tension and distress (Anxiety Differential, Subjective Units of Discomfort, Level of Relaxation). It was hypothesized that differences in treatment effect using identical live and tape relaxation training instructions would be a function of the amount of involvement exercised by the experimenter in individualizing the therapeutic procedure