Effectiveness of complementary projection in reducing stress

Threatened Ss in five stress groups with electric shock, while Ss in a sixth group were not threatened. In one of the stress groups Ss were encouraged to project causality for their feelings that resulted from the threat of shock to the E instead of to the shock, while Ss in the remaining stress groups were not encouraged to project causality for the threat-produced affects to the E. Physiological and self-report measures indicated that Ss who projected their anxiety and nervousness to the E were just as distressed by the veridical source of arousal as were Ss who did not project. Implications of these results for the hypothesized stress-reducing effectiveness of complementary projection were discussed.