Training the social skill “being able to demand” vs. training the social skill “being able to say no”. A randomized controlled trial with healthy individuals

- “Being able to demand” and “being able to say no” are important social skills.
- We explored whether training one of these skills has specific or generalized effects.
- Training to demand improved specifically the social skill “being able to demand”.
- Training to say no improved specifically the social skill “being able to say no”.
- Training effects did not generalize to the untrained social skill in this RCT.

Background and objectivesThis randomized controlled trial evaluated whether training one of two social skills (“being able to say no” and “being able to demand”) belonging to the domain “asserting one's rights” improves specifically the trained skill or the “asserting one's rights” domain in general.MethodsTen social skills training groups comprising three weekly sessions and four healthy participants each were conducted. In each group, the participants were randomized either to the condition which practiced the social skill of “saying no” or to the condition which practiced the social skill of “demanding”.ResultsFrom pre-training to 3-month follow-up, participants of the “demanding” condition improved significantly on the “being able to demand” scale of the “Short Version of the Insecurity Questionnaire” (p = 0.047) but not on the “incapacity in saying no” scale of the “Short Version of the Insecurity Questionnaire” (p = 0.645), whereas participants of the “saying no” condition improved significantly on the “incapacity in saying no” scale of the “Short Version of the Insecurity Questionnaire” (p = 0.015) but not on the “being able to demand” scale of the “Short Version of the Insecurity Questionnaire” (p = 0.484).LimitationsFurther studies are needed to evaluate whether the results of the present study can be generalized to clinical samples.ConclusionsThis trial provides very preliminary evidence that training a specific social skill has specific, not generalized, effects.