Outcome-specific record — catalogued as: Triple-blind RCT of EFT stress biochemistry / nonclinical anxiety trial (as tabulated in Clond 2016)
Church, D., et al. · 2012
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).
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.
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.
| Design | Randomized trial |
|---|---|
| Participants | 83 people |
| Population | nonclinical adults with elevated anxiety (~50% on SA-45) |
| Comparison group | waitlist and supportive interview |
| Effect size | Cohen's d (EFT vs waitlist) = 1.34 (95% CI 0.66–2.02) — on anxiety, EFT vs waitlist; between-group d=1.34 as recomputed by Clond (2016) (the primary paper reports only percentage change and ANCOVA F, not a Cohen's d). |
| Outcome measures | SA-45 |
| Journal | Original publication venue not confirmed (indexed via Clond 2016 Table 1/2; likely related to Church et al. 2012 cortisol RCT) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Method | EFT / Tapping |
| Publication type | Study / trial |
| Verification | ✓ Confirmed against the primary source |
Church, D., & et al. (2012). The Effect of Emotional Freedom Techniques on Stress Biochemistry: A Randomized Controlled Trial. 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 · Stress & Cortisol · How It Works (Biology)
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