Impact of Experienced Disgust on Information-Processing Biases in Contamination-Based OCD: An Analogue Study

摘要

The present study examined the influence of experienced disgust on information-processing biases, as assessed by a lexical decision task, among participants high (HCF; n = 33) and low (LCF; n = 21) in contamination-based OCD. Consistent with prior work, participants were significantly slower at responding to disgust words compared to fear, happy, and neutral words, while the other word types did not significantly differ from each other. In a neutral mood induction condi-tion, HCF individuals were significantly slower, compared to LCF individuals, in responding to all emotional words, but not neutral words. However, there were no differences between LCF and HCF individuals in reaction times to any word con-tents in the disgust mood induction condition. Subsequent analyses also revealed that for females, HCF individuals were significantly slower, compared to LCF indi-viduals, in responding to emotional words, but not to neutral words. However, for males, there were no significant differences between the LCF and HCF individuals in reaction times to any word type. Implications and suggestions for continued re-search examining information-processing biases as a possible mechanism by which disgust may contribute to contamination-based OCD are outlined.