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The manipulation of responsibility in obsessive‐compulsive disorder
Author(s) -
Shafran Roz
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
british journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0144-6657
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1997.tb01247.x
Subject(s) - psychology , harm , obsessive compulsive , moral responsibility , cognition , social responsibility , anxiety disorder , social psychology , clinical psychology , anxiety , psychiatry , philosophy , ecology , epistemology , biology
It has been suggested that appraisal of intrusive thoughts in terms of responsibility for harm lies at the core of obsessional complaints. Clinical observation, psychometric data and the effects of manipulating responsibility for threat in compulsive checkers and normal samples have supported this formulation. The purpose of the present study was to manipulate responsibility in 36 obsessional participants with varied phenomenology. Responsibility was manipulated indirectly by varying the presence/absence of the experimenter during a behavioural task. The manipulation was successful in influencing reports of perceived responsibility for threat. In the high responsibility condition; estimates of the urge to neutralize, discomfort and probability of threat were all significantly higher than in the low responsibility condition; estimates of responsibility for thoughts and the control over the threat did not change significantly between the conditions. There was no significant interaction between the responsibility manipulation and the type of compulsion. The results are interpreted as providing support for a cognitive‐behavioural formulation which emphasizes the role of responsibility appraisal in obsessive‐compulsive disorder.