Manipulating visual perspective for obsessional imagery and its impact on obsessive-compulsive symptoms in an analogue sample

Abstract

Visual perspective may have an important role in the phenomenology of intrusive images relevant to psychological disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The aim of the current study was to examine the subjective and behavioural effects of manipulating visual perspective, to either field or observer, on intrusive images related to doubting and contamination concerns. One hundred and twelve undergraduate participants with high levels OCD symptoms were asked to identify and imagine an intrusive image related to either doubting or contamination concerns. We then randomly assigned them to re-visualise their image from either a field (first-person) or observer (third-person) visual perspective. Participants shifted towards using an observer perspective demonstrated a greater decrease on ratings of subjective measures of image-related distress, prospective likelihood of the image occurring, and urges to suppress the image, relative to those shifted to a field perspective. In addition, those in the observer perspective evidenced a greater decrease on behavioural indices relevant to OCD, such as reduced frequency of the intrusive image and decreased efforts to neutralise the image. We discuss implications for imagery in OCD.