AbstractAlthough Rational‐Emotive Therapy (RET) would posit that greater levels of irrationality and negative emotionality will be found in distressed persons, this basic hypothesis has never been examined. In this study, 60 normal university students and 45 new client applicants for mental health services completed the Survey of Personal Beliefs to assess irrational ideation and the Beck Depression Inventory, the State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory, the State‐Trait Anger Inventory, the Problematic Situations Questionnaire, and the Profile of Mood States to assess negative emotionality. As predicted, the clinical group was found to be more anxious (p<.01), more depressed (p<.01), more confused (p<.01), less vigorous (p<.05), and to report lower frustration tolerance (p<.05) as compared to the normal group. Overall, clinical subjects did not show higher levels of irrational thinking. However, clinical subjects with high depression scores had significantly higher overall irrational ideation in contrast to those in the normal group with low depression scores (p<.05). Finally, significant correlations were found between overall irrational ideation and Trait Anger (p<.01) and between overall irrational ideation and Total Guilt (p<.05). Because the clinical group was significantly older by 10 years, replication with a larger number of subjects of equal ages is recomm
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