The Tapping Evidence Base
Anxiety

Triple-blind RCT of EFT stress biochemistry / nonclinical anxiety trial (as tabulated in Clond 2016)

Church, D., et al. · 2012

Randomized trial👥 83 participants⚖️ vs. waitlist and supportive interview📈 Cohen's 1.34 (large)Moderate rigor✓ Source-checked📍 United States
In plain English. In this study of 83 nonclinical adults with moderate anxiety, a single hour-long tapping session led to a large drop in anxiety compared with people who did nothing, and a smaller but still real drop compared with people who simply talked to a supportive interviewer.

What they found

Cohen's = 1.34
a large effect · 95% CI 0.66–2.02 · on anxiety symptoms
smallmoderatelarge
00.50.82.5

One EFT session (n=28) vs waitlist (n=27) and supportive interview (n=28); EFT-vs-waitlist difference d=1.34 (95% CI 0.66–2.02, p<0.001); EFT-vs-interview difference d=0.71 (95% CI 0.00–1.42, p=0.049).

How the study worked

Who took partnonclinical adults with elevated anxiety (~50% on SA-45) (n=83)
What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.
Compared withwaitlist and supportive interview
Measured withSA-45

💡 Where this could help

Picture someone with everyday, nagging anxiety, not a diagnosed disorder, just enough to make life harder, who doesn't feel it's 'serious enough' to seek therapy and wouldn't know where to start looking for one. If a single hour of tapping continues to outperform simply waiting or talking to a supportive listener, it hints at a genuinely useful self-administered tool — learnable without a clinician and usable for free, indefinitely — for the enormous number of people whose anxiety falls below a clinical threshold but still deserves relief.

🔬 What to study next

Since a single EFT session already beat both waiting and a supportive conversation in this triple-blind design, a valuable next step is adding physiological measures, cortisol or heart rate variability, to this same three-arm comparison, to see whether tapping's edge over supportive listening shows up biologically, not just on the SA-45 questionnaire. Testing whether the benefit compounds with a second or third session, rather than stopping at one, would also clarify whether nonclinical anxiety needs just a single dose or ongoing practice.

The full record

DesignRandomized trial
Participants83 people
Populationnonclinical adults with elevated anxiety (~50% on SA-45)
Comparison groupwaitlist and supportive interview
Effect sizeCohen's d (EFT vs waitlist) = 1.34 (95% CI 0.66–2.02) — on anxiety symptoms
Outcome measuresSA-45
JournalOriginal publication venue not confirmed (indexed via Clond 2016 Table 1/2; likely related to Church et al. 2012 cortisol RCT)
Year2012
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
MethodEFT / tapping
Publication typeStudy / trial
Verification✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Church, D., & et al. (2012). Triple-blind RCT of EFT stress biochemistry / nonclinical anxiety trial (as tabulated in Clond 2016). https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e31826b9fc1

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Anxiety

Share this study

A ready-made graphic — right-click or long-press to save the image.

Show shareable card
THE TAPPING EVIDENCE BASE Anxiety Cohen's 1.34 large effect WHAT THEY FOUND One EFT session (n=28) vs waitlist (n=27)and supportive interview (n=28); EFT-vs-waitlist difference d=1.34 (95% CI… Randomized trial · 83 participants Church · 2012 · evidence.thetappingsolution.com