Disentangling beliefs about emotions from emotion schemas

The current study sought to empirically evaluate a new clinical tool, the Individual Beliefs about Emotion (IBAE) which assesses nine beliefs about emotion. The goal was to examine the overlap of the IBAE with the Leahy Emotional Schema Scale (LESS; Leahy, 2002) and indices of psychopathology. Participants (n = 513) completed the IBAE, the LESS, and measures of depression, anxiety, and borderline personality features. Results indicated that both emotion beliefs (IBAE) and schemas (LESS) were influenced by age and gender. Both measures significantly predicted variance in depression, anxiety and borderline symptoms, although the LESS was a stronger predictor. We conclude that the LESS total score is a particularly useful measure of maladaptive schematic attitudes toward emotion, with additional evidence that the IBAE can quickly assess a variety of emotion beliefs and also predicts psychopathology outcomes.