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Abstract
Background
The recent expansion of interest in contamination‐related obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) has fostered the description of mental contamination and a series of experiments designed to understand associated factors. This supports a cognitive approach to the understanding and treatment of contamination‐related OCD—especially when the contaminant is mental, rather than contact based. Appraisals associated with responsibility, violation, and immorality have been shown to predict mental contamination responses to an imagined negative event which included negative moral elements in the absence of imagined physical dirt. Imagined physical dirt can be a highly distressing component of contamination fear and is often used in OCD research. The aim of this study was to assess whether specific appraisals could predict mental contamination responses in the context of an imagined event involving both an immoral person and physical dirt.
Methods
Female undergraduate students (N = 59) imagined experiencing a non‐consensual kiss from a man described as physically dirty.
Results
Consistent with predictions and with previous findings, appraisals generally accounted for significant unique variance in mental contamination indices above and beyond other predictor variables.
Conclusions
Further development of assessment/treatment strategies focusing on appraisals will likely improve therapeutic outcomes for mental contamination.
Abstract
Key words:
Funding: This research was supported in part by both fellowship and operating grant support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Conflict of interest: CIHR had no role in study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of data, writing the manuscript, or submitting the article for publication.
Funding: This research was supported in part by both fellowship and operating grant support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Conflict of interest: CIHR had no role in study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of data, writing the manuscript, or submitting the article for publication.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of a previous version of this manuscript for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to Ivana Di Leo, Stefanie Lavoie, Stella‐Marie Paradisis, and Megan Wood for their help with data collection and entry.
Notes
Funding: This research was supported in part by both fellowship and operating grant support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Conflict of interest: CIHR had no role in study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of data, writing the manuscript, or submitting the article for publication.