The benefits of radical acceptance of reality as a standalone strategy for emotion regulation

Acceptance-based skills are widely used in psychological treatments, yet evidence regarding the effectiveness of acceptance as a standalone strategy for downregulating negative emotions is mixed. This study compared two emotion regulation skills from Dialectical-Behavior Therapy (DBT): an acceptance-based skill that encourages radical acceptance of reality (i.e., Radical Acceptance) and a cognitive-change-based skill that encourages reappraisal of negative events (i.e., Check the Facts). In a single session, 92 healthy young adults were randomly assigned to use radical acceptance (N = 46) or check the facts (N = 46) to cope with a personally distressing event. Before and after the session, participants completed an independent emotion regulation task involving exposure to aversive stimuli to assess their ability to engage in acceptance and cognitive reappraisal. The results showed that negative affect induced by the personal distressing event fully returned to baseline among those who used radical acceptance, but not among those who used check the facts. On the emotion regulation task, radical acceptance enhanced the ability to use both acceptance (particularly nonjudgmental awareness) and cognitive reappraisal to downregulate negative emotion more effectively than check the facts. These findings suggest that radical acceptance not only functions as a robust standalone method for emotion regulation but also as a catalyst for other emotion regulation strategies such as those based on cognitive change.