Baker-Seigel study on phobias

Dr. A Harvey Baker, Director of the psychology laboratory at Queens College, New York, and co-author Linda Seigel have just completed a study entitled: “Can a 45 minute session of EFT lead to reduction of intense fear of rats, spiders and water bugs –– a replication and extension of the Wells et al. (2003) laboratory study.”

EFT participants improved significantly from pre- to post-test in their ability to walk closer to the feared animal after having received EFT, while the supportive interview and control group showed no improvement in this respect. Participants generally equally believed that the supportive interview and EFT would help. Yet despite this, the supportive interview did no better in than the no-treatment control condition in terms of results.  This shows that expectation of the participant cannot explain the superior results obtained by EFT.

Baker and Seigel also conducted a follow-up study after a 1.4 years lapse between the time of the original testing and the follow-up.  On most measures, the significant effects for a single session of EFT still persisted after this considerable lapse of time and were superior to the results for the two comparison conditions.  It is quite striking that only one session of EFT could still show effects almost one and half years later.  This can be said of very few interventions in the field of psychology.

The Baker-Seigel study is complete and will soon be submitted for publication.  [ Read full report at EFTUpdate ]