Exploring the role of metacognition in obsessive--compulsive and anxiety symptoms

This study tests three hypotheses, predicting first that metacognition is highly correlated with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive (O-C) symptoms, second that it mediates the relationship between O-C symptoms and anxiety, and third that the meta-cognitive predictors of anxiety are different from the meta-cognitive predictors of O-C symptoms. The sample of the present study was 850 students selected from various universities in Turkey. Significant correlations between metacognition, O-C symptoms and anxiety were observed. Also, mediation analysis confirmed that metacognition fully mediated the relationship between O-C symptoms and anxiety. Consistent with our hypothesis, trait anxiety and O-C symptoms had different meta-cognitive predictors. Although, we expected that meta-cognitive beliefs would vary based on the sub-type of O-C symptoms, meta-cognitive beliefs did not differ according to the O-C symptom subtypes. We discussed results with reference to the literature of meta-cognition, anxiety and O-C symptoms.