Contraction experiments were performed on hot‐stretched polystyrene during isothermal annealing and tempering. Activation energy spectra were obtained from the experimental data using the Primak theory. In the case of isothermal annealing the theory of Kimmel et al. with shift factors was used. There is an appreciable difference between this spectrum and that obtained from the tempering experiment by the original theory without shift factors. These two spectra should be the same according to the theory. In order to resolve the conflict, we have included a correlation between activation processes in the fundamental equation of the Primak theory. A new formula for calculating the activation energy spectra was obtained. For isothermal annealing, it can be written the same as that of Kimmel et al. The shift factor is also included in the formula for tempering. The activation energy spectra obtained by the new formula gives good agreement between the two methods.