Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder characterized by unwanted thoughts or actions that are repeated involuntarily, regardless of one's will. It manifests primarily through various types of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Res...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder characterized by unwanted thoughts or actions that are repeated involuntarily, regardless of one's will. It manifests primarily through various types of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Researches have been conducted to describe OCD symptoms and explore the relationship between factors such as responsibility, thought-action fusion, thought suppression, and OCD symptoms. However, these studies have primarily explored fragmented correlations between these factors and OCD symptoms, and there has been a lack of research on the mechanisms through which these factors influence OCD symptoms, despite their interrelatedness. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the impact of inflated responsibility on OCD symptoms and verify the dual mediating effects of thought-action fusion and thought suppression.
An online survey was conducted for 480 adults involving the Obsessive Belief Questoinnaire(OBQ), Thought-Action Fusion Scale-Revised(TAFS-R), White Bear Suppression Inventory(WBSI), Padua Inventory-Washington State University Revised(PI-WSUR). The data was analyzed through IBM SPSS Stastics Version 21.0 and PROCESS macro v.4.2.
As a result, First, responsibility had a significant positive relationship with thought-action fusion, thought suppression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms. We confirmed the simple mediating effect of thought-action fusion and thought suppression between responsibility and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Lastly, we discovered the full dual mediation effect of responsibility on the path to obsessive-compulsive symptoms through thought-action fusion and thought suppression.
According to the results of this study, it was found that responsibility has a significant impact on obsessive-compulsive symptoms through sequential processes of thought-action fusion and thought suppression. Therefore, it suggests that interventions targeting maladaptive cognitive processing, such as thought-action fusion and thought suppression, can be effective in alleviating obsessive-compulsive symptoms associated with responsibility.
Therefore, this study is meaningful in that it provided a therapeutic intervention direction for people suffering from obsessive-compulsive symptoms due to inflated responsibility. Based on these results, the significance and limitations of this study and suggestions for future research were discussed.