Individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) engage in what psychologists refer to as “catastrophizing.” This phrase is used to describe the repeated mental simulation of unlikely catastrophic scenarios. Researchers have discovered that this phenomenon has to do with an individual’s warped perception of the realistic probability of certain events. A new paper published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science illustrates why people with OCD often partake in catastrophizing.
“OCD-related obsessions are largely organized around fears of a specific harmful consequence that compulsions are enacted to prevent,” said the researchers led by Christopher Hunt of the University of Minnesota. Nearly all common symptoms associated with the major OCD subtypes have two main attributes. First, the most feared situations for those with OCD are objectively catastrophic: the loss of housing, health, or loved ones. Second, the scenarios surrounding the events in question are highly unlikely.
In order to investigate the idea that improbable events are viewed as a possible scenarios for those with OCD, the researchers studied 78 university students. They first measured the participants’ levels of OCD by using the 18-item OCI-R questionnaire. This questionnaire measures an individual's overall levels of OCD.
Once this step was completed, it was then requested that the students play a video game where they were a farmer with the goal of harvesting crops in an environment that was not predictable. They had to make decisions in the game, like choosing between taking a short, dangerous road or a long, safe road to start planting crops. Negative events during the game caused the students to get a small electric shock to their wrist. Their expectations and reactions to negative scenarios were measured by analyzing their startle response and self-reported anxiety and threat-probability ratings that were requested at different points during the game.
Through this process, the researchers found that the participants that exhibited OCD symptoms were more avoidant of the lower probability negative outcomes in the game. They noted, “OCD did not confer a general tendency to avoid threat but, rather, a specific proclivity to avoid experimental analogues of improbable catastrophes.” It was also discovered that students with OCD showed an increased startle response to low probability negative events.
These results offer initial experimental support for the idea that “a variety of common OCD presentations involve concerns with improbable catastrophic consequences and further implicate a more general sensitivity toward improbable threat as a candidate deficit driving this phenomenon.” The researchers concluded that this study provides the first lab-based test of whether OCD is associated with an underlying sensitivity regarding unlikely catastrophic threats. The results illustrate that those with higher OCD symptoms were more avoidant of potential threats that were both improbable and highly aversive.