Summary: This study is a direct replication of Church, Yount, and Brooks (2012), randomly assigning 53 participants to a single 60-minute session of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), psychoeducation (PE), or no treatment (NT), with salivary cortisol and psychological distress (via the SA-45) measured before and after. The original 2012 study had found EFT produced significant reductions in anxiety, depression, overall symptom severity, and symptom breadth, along with a notably larger cortisol drop than the PE and NT groups.
In this replication, the EFT group again showed a significant cortisol reduction — even larger than in the original study (-43.24%) — and significantly greater than the PE group's reduction, though this time it wasn't matched by significant improvements in self-reported psychological distress. The EFT group's post-treatment cortisol was lower than the NT group's, but that difference didn't reach statistical significance, and neither the PE nor NT groups showed meaningful cortisol change.
Overall, the authors conclude the results support EFT as an efficient, effective brief intervention for reducing the biological marker of cortisol, even though the subjective symptom findings from the original study weren't fully replicated.
Citation and Link: Stapleton, P., Crighton, G., Sabot, D., & O'Neill, H. M. (2020). Reexamining the effect of emotional freedom techniques on stress biochemistry: A randomized controlled trial. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(8), 869–877. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000563
Read the Original Study at Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy