Fleet MaullThe Entrepreneur’s Zen Master

Prof. Steven C. Hayes on Psychological Flexibility and the Relational Frame Theory

4 May 2023 · 1 min

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This is a short excerpt from a YouTube interview (uploaded May 4, 2023) in which Prof. Steven C. Hayes is asked to define "psychological flexibility." Hayes describes it as a construct that evolved over roughly 40 years aiming to identify the smallest set of processes that explain positive and negative outcomes; he says psychological flexibility comprises six interrelated areas, metaphorically "like six sides of a box." The clip frames the concept as an integrative, process-focused model.

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But first, could you describe just what you mean by that term, psychological flexibility? It's evolved over almost 40 years of sort of chasing down what is the smallest set of processes, things that people do that lead to positive or negative outcomes that can explain the most things. And there's six sort of areas of psychological flexibility, but they all go together. It's like six sides of a box. And just like a box, if you take out two sides, you really don't have a box, and everything's all floppy and soggy, like.