GESTALT THEORY © 2011(ISSN 0170-057 X) Vol. 33, No.1, ???? William M. Lapp, Douglas L. Polcin & Rachael A. Korcha A Reciprocal Eects Model for Achieving and Maintaining Sobriety 1 A mechanism of behavior change that is strongly believed to help regulate the intake of alcohol and other drugs is the perceived costs and benets of sobriety (Cunningham et al., 1997; Tate & Ellis, 1996), but it is not currently known whether thought precedes action or actions speak louder than words when it comes to sobriety. In the history of psychology, the connection between cognition and behavior formed the basis of many theoretical contests regarding whether thought led action or action led thought (e.g., Neisser, 1967; Skinner, 1953; Watson, 1913). In the therapeutic domain, many Behavior erapists rejected the lengthy, somewhat scientically suspect “talking therapies” (e.g., various forms of Psychoanalysis and Humanistic erapy) and insisted that behavioral “conditioning” (both classical and operant) could more parsimoniously achieve the same or better outcomes. e position was later reversed with the advent of cognitive therapy; e.g., Aaron T. Beck’s cognitive theory of depression (Beck, 1967; Beck et al., 1979) that later multiplied into treatments for everything from schizophrenia (Kingdon & Turkington, 2004; Sensky, 2000) to substance abuse (Beck et al., 1993). Before the critical test regarding the precedence of cognition and/or behavior could be performed in the present study, care was taken to test aspects of the reliability of the psychometric measurement of the costs and benets of sobriety (the Alcohol and Drugs Consequences Questionnaire: ADCQ) because even though it has proven to be internally consistent ( !’s = 0.90+), the test is not normed with respect to any population and it is relatively untested within most populations (Donovan, 2004). Reciprocal changes in thought and behavior have loomed large in our major theoretical explanations within psychology, but the discipline is now generating more integrative theoretical positions in which synchrony among mental and behavioral processes is postulated. Leon Festinger (1957) proposed a theory of cognitive dissonance to explain changes in attitude based on the incongruity of thoughts and actions - the easiest way to resolve the internal conict is to simply adjust one’s attitudes to reect what one has done. On the other hand, Albert Ellis (1957) in his formulation of Rational Emotive erapy initially suggested that behavior change could be readily accomplished by simply acting “as if” one had accomplished a desired (esp., interpersonal) prociency and claimed an individual 1 Please note that there is an Internet version of this article containing additional tables and more detailed material on methodological issues: gestalttheory.net/gth/Lapp2011.html