Obsessive compulsive symptoms and the simulation of future negative events.

Full Abstract

OBJECTIVES:
To explore whether Kahneman and Tversky's (1982) simulation heuristic might help account for why the obsessions of people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are so compelling to them. It was predicted that participants would be better able to simulate a scenario relevant to a central OCD fear than they would scenarios related to other OCD and non-OCD fears and that how well participants simulated feared scenarios would be associated with higher ratings of subjective probability for that outcome and consequently greater worry.

DESIGN:
Individuals with obsessive compulsive symptoms mentally simulated hypothetical scenarios so as to enable comparison of a personally relevant to less relevant scenarios.

METHODS:
Thirty participants recruited from OCD support groups simulated four scenarios each and completed symptom and relevant construct measures.

RESULTS:
Personally relevant scenarios were better simulated than less relevant scenarios. 'Goodness of simulation' (GOS) was related to worry about the feared outcome, but this was not mediated by raised subjective probabilities. GOS correlated with OCD symptomatology, anxiety, and depression but not with cognitive variables thought to be related to OCD phenomenology.

CONCLUSION:
The overall findings converge with recent literature (O'Connor, 2002) emphasizing the importance of imagination and imaginary narratives in fuelling OCD symptoms.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Keen, Nadine (N); Brown, Gary P (GP); Wheatley, Jonathan (J);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Surrey, UK.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: The British journal of clinical psychology / the British Psychological Society (Br J Clin Psychol), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Sep; vol 47 (issue Pt 3) : pp 265-79

Dates: Created 2008/07/11; Completed 2008/09/03;

PMID: 18269783, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Aged
Attention
Delphi Technique
Fear
Female
Humans
Imagination
Life Change Events
Male
Memory

Memory
Middle Aged
Models, Psychological
Narration
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - diagnosis; psychology
Personality Inventory - statistics & numerical data
Probability
Psychometrics
Questionnaires
Reproducibility of Results
Stress, Psychological - diagnosis; psychology

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.