Feared self and responsibility in obsessive compulsive phenomena
Yoon-Hee Yang1, Tess Jaeger2, Richard Moulding3
1School of Psychology, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
The British Journal of Clinical Psychology
|April 28, 2026
Summary
Feared self significantly increases discomfort in obsessive-compulsive tendencies, while responsibility manipulation had no effect. Understanding feared self is crucial for cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive phenomena.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Obsessive-compulsive tendencies (OCD) are often associated with maladaptive cognitive processes.
- Feared self and inflated responsibility are proposed cognitive factors in OCD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally investigate the roles of feared self and inflated responsibility in obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
- To examine the impact of these factors on discomfort and checking behaviors.
Main Methods:
- An online experiment with 185 participants randomly assigned to responsibility (heightened vs. control) and feared self (morality, culpability, or neutral) conditions.
- Participants completed vignette tasks, and outcome measures included discomfort ratings and response times, serving as a behavioral measure of checking.
Main Results:
- Responsibility manipulation did not significantly affect outcome variables.
- Participants' existing level of feared self and the feared-self manipulation significantly increased discomfort levels.
Conclusions:
- Feared self plays a fundamental cognitive-affective role in obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
- Integrating feared-self processes into cognitive models is important for understanding discomfort in OCD.
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