Heightened Sensitivity to Improbable Catastrophes As a Pathogenic Marker of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Theory and Experimental Evidence
2021-09
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Heightened Sensitivity to Improbable Catastrophes As a Pathogenic Marker of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Theory and Experimental Evidence
Authors
Published Date
2021-09
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
Although the obsessions implicated in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) could theoretically involve any distressing topic, they typically gravitate toward a handful of specific themes (e.g., contamination, religion, sex, etc.). The universality of these themes across OCD patients from different time periods, cultures, and age-groups suggests they are manifestations of a common, underlying process, but little effort has been made to elucidate the identity of this process. One intriguing feature shared across most common obsessions is a heightened concern with consequences that are objectively terrible but highly unlikely (e.g., catching HIV from a door knob, being sent to hell for a fleeting immoral thought). The ubiquity of this particular consequence suggests that OCD may be characterized by an underlying sensitivity to improbable catastrophes (SIC), but this possibility has yet to be explored. The present dissertation sought to address this gap by examining whether OCD symptoms predicted higher anxious reactivity toward unlikely, highly aversive threats across three experimental studies. In the first study, college students with higher OCD symptoms exhibited greater avoidance of improbable, highly aversive threats, as well as greater expectancy and physiological reactivity for improbable threats in general. An extension of this investigation with different types of experimental threats (study two) showed that OCD symptoms predicted heightened expectancy of improbable threats involving both harmful and disgust-related consequences, while relations between OCD symptoms and avoidance of improbable, highly aversive consequences were specific to harmful threats. Finally, study three showed that differences in expectancy, anxiety, and avoidance for improbable threats prospectively predicted changes in OCD symptoms over the first year of college, with indices of anxious reactivity to improbable threat (anxiety, startle, avoidance) emerging as especially predictive among participants who rated the threat as highly aversive. Together, these studies implicate SIC as a novel pathogenic marker of OCD, and suggest its role in the illness may derive from a more general tendency to overestimate the likelihood of improbable outcomes bearing high subjective costs.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.September 2021. Major: Psychology. Advisor: Shmuel Lissek. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 275 pages.
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
Hunt, Christopher. (2021). Heightened Sensitivity to Improbable Catastrophes As a Pathogenic Marker of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Theory and Experimental Evidence. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/224967.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.