Risking Everything in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Analogue Decision-Making Study

Overview

Journal J Psychopathol Behav Assess

Publisher Springer

Specialty Psychology

Date 2021 Nov 29

PMID 34840417

Citations 1

Authors

James Croft

Jessica R Grisham

Andrew Perfors

Brett K Hayes

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

An experiment examined decision-making processes among nonclinical participants with low or high levels of OCD symptomatology (N = 303). To better simulate the decision environments that are most likely to be problematic for clients with OCD, we employed decision tasks that incorporated "black swan" options that have a very low probability but involve substantial loss. When faced with a choice between a safer option that involved no risk of loss or a riskier alternative with a very low probability of substantial loss, most participants chose the safer option regardless of OCD symptom level. However, when faced with choices between options that had similar expected values to the previous choices, but where each option had some low risk of a substantial loss, there was a significant shift towards riskier decisions. These effects were stronger when the task involved a contamination based, health-relevant decision task as compared to one with financial outcomes. The results suggest that both low and high symptom OC participants approach decisions involving risk-free options and decisions involving risky alternatives in qualitatively different ways. There was some evidence that measures of impulsivity were better predictors of the shift to risky decision making than OCD symptomatology.

Citing Articles

Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Etiology, neuropathology, and cognitive dysfunction.

Jalal B, Chamberlain S, Sahakian B Brain Behav. 2023; 13(6):e3000.

PMID: 37137502 PMC: 10275553. DOI: 10.1002/brb3.3000.

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