Rigid Rules of Conduct and Duty: Prediction of Thought-Action Fusion

Cognitive biases, such as thought-action fusion (TAF), play a crucial role in the cognitive-behavioral model of obsessional symptoms and have been shown to prospectively increase the risk of developing such symptoms. Much less research, however, has examined factors that might lead to the development of the cognitive biases themselves. This study aimed to replicate and extend existing work on correlates of moral (thinking about something is the moral equivalent of the corresponding action) and likelihood (thinking about a particular event increases the probability that this event will occur) TAF. A large sample of unscreened participants (N = 407) completed a measure of TAF, as well as measures of religiosity, motivation for religion, parental psychological control, and parental guilt induction. Results indicated that religion-related variables predicted the moral TAF, whereas parenting strategies were associated with likelihood TAF. Intrinsic motivation for religion also mediated the relationship between religiosity and moral TAF. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental psychopathology and limitations are addressed.