Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes the relationship a person has with their thoughts and beliefs as potentially more relevant than belief content in predicting the emotional and behavioral consequences of cognition. In ACT, 'defusion' interventions aim to 'unhook' thoughts from actions and to create psychological distance between a person and their thoughts, beliefs, memories and self-stories. A number of similar concepts have been described in the psychology literature (e.g. decentering, metacognition, mentalization and mindfulness) suggesting converging evidence that how we relate to mental events may be of critical importance. Whilst there are some good measures of these related processes, none of them provides an adequate operationalization of cognitive fusion. Despite the centrality of cognitive fusion in the ACT model, there is as yet no agreed measure of cognitive fusion. This paper presents the construction and development of a brief, self-report measure of cognitive fusion: The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ). The results of a series of studies involving over 1800 people across diverse samples show good preliminary evidence of the CFQ's factor structure, reliability, temporal stability, validity, discriminant validity, and sensitivity to treatment effects. The potential uses of the CFQ in research and clinical practice are outlined.

Over the past decade, experimental and longitudinal research has shown that psychological flexibility is an important determinant of mental health and behavioural effectiveness in the workplace. These findings have been established using a general measure of this psychological process, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire–Revised (AAQ‐II). Consistent with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) theory, psychological flexibility may demonstrate even stronger associations with variables related to a work context (e.g., job satisfaction) if it were assessed using a measure of the construct that is tailored to the workplace. To test this hypothesis, we first developed such a measure, the work‐related acceptance and action questionnaire (WAAQ). Findings from 745 participants across three studies reveal that the structure, validity and reliability of the WAAQ are satisfactory. As predicted, the WAAQ, in comparison with the AAQ‐II, correlates significantly more strongly with work‐specific variables. In contrast, the AAQ‐II tends to correlate more strongly with outcomes that are likely to be more stable across different contexts (e.g., mental health and personality variables). These findings are discussed in relation to ACT theory. Practitioner points Experimental and longitudinal research has shown that psychological flexibility is an individual characteristic that is an important determinant of mental health and behavioural effectiveness in the workplace. The Work‐Related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ) assesses psychological flexibility as it relates to the workplace. Psychological flexibility is a useful individual characteristic for practitioners to assess, as it is stable over time, but interventions can also enhance it, and, as a result, improve mental health and behavioural effectiveness in the workplace.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. One hundred employees of a UK government department were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) a worksite, group-based, CBT intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; n = 43), which aimed to increase participants' psychological flexibility; and, (2) a waitlist control group (control; n = 57). The ACT group received three half-day sessions of training spread over two and a half months. Data were collected at baseline (T1), at the beginning of the second (T2) and third (T3) workshops, and at six months follow-up (T4). Consistent with ACT theory, analyses revealed that, in comparison to the control group, a significant increase in psychological flexibility from T2 to T3 in the ACT group mediated the subsequent T2 to T4 decrease in emotional exhaustion in the ACT group. Permanent repository linkConsistent with a theory of emotional burnout development, this significant decrease in emotional exhaustion from T2 to T4 in the ACT group prevented the significant T3 to T4 increase in depersonalization seen in the control group. Strain also decreased from T2 to T3in the ACT group, only, but no mediator of that improvement was identified. Discussion focuses on implications for theory and practice in the fields of ACT and emotional burnout.

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Employees with low levels of work-related self-efficacy may stand to benefit more from a worksite stress management training (SMT) intervention. However, this low work-related self-efficacy/enhanced SMT benefits effect may be conditional on employees also having high levels of intrinsic work motivation. In the present study, we examined this proposition by testing three-way, or higher-order, interaction effects. One hundred and fifty-three UK government employees were randomly assigned to a SMT intervention group (n = 68), or to a waiting list control group (n = 85). The SMT group received three half-day training sessions spread over two and a half months. Findings indicated that there were significant overall reductions in psychological strain, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the SMT group, in comparison to the control group. Furthermore, there were significant higher-order Group (SMT vs. control) × Time 1 Work-Related Self-Efficacy × Time 1 Intrinsic Work Motivation interactions, such that reductions in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization