Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Recent studies have shown that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) tend to endorse a feared self that they perceive to be immoral, insane and/or dangerous. The current study investigated the relationship between morality-related feared self, self-relevance and OC-related cognitions and behaviours such as moral deliberation, threat interpretation bias, discomfort, urge to act and likelihood of acting in OC-relevant situations in a non-clinical sample. METHOD: = 29.85, SD = 9.8) underwent a priming study. Participants had their feared-self primed firstly via an unscrambling task in either a feared self or neutral condition and secondly via a writing task about moral transgressions. The response time for these tasks was recorded as a measurement of moral deliberation. Further, self-relevance was primed by having half of the participants' complete tasks that referenced their actions, whereas half of the participants completed tasks that referenced others' actions. RESULTS: It was found that participants' pre-existing level of feared self was linked to threat interpretation bias, discomfort and urge to act in OC-relevant situations. A primed sense of feared self and self-relevance also demonstrated significant links to changes in OC-relevant symptoms. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that environmental cues related to morality may lead to OC-related symptoms.
DOI: 10.1111/bjc.12527
Authors: Yoon‐Hee Yang, Tess Jaeger, Richard Moulding
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Deakin University
OpenAlex ID: W4405689177