Abstract
BackgroundStrong feelings of disgust and anxiety are maintaining factors in contamination-related obsessive–compulsive disorder (C-OCD). To this day there are not many studies that investigated strategies for changing pathological disgust. In a previous study, it was shown that imagery rescripting could successfully change disgust. However, whether imagery rescripting or more general imagery processing, helps to reduce pathological disgust, remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate how successful imagery rescripting is in comparison to imagery self-compassion and a passive positive imagery condition in reducing disgust.MethodsFor this, the three strategies were compared to each other on 2 days (within-subject) in a laboratory experiment. The study included 24 subjects with diagnosed C-OCD, and 24 matched, healthy controls (between-subject).ResultsThe results show that all three strategies changed disgust, they do not differ from each other and that different traits appear to influence the strategies’ success or failure. The theoretically derived underlying mechanisms of the strategies were found in an elaborate content analysis.ConclusionsThe present study provides first indications that imagery in general can help to change pathological disgust experience.
Highlights
Disgust and fear are important maintaining factors in the contamination-related subtype of obsessive–compulsive disorders (C-OCD, Cisler et al, 2009), yet studies have shown that people with contamination-related subtype of OCD (C-OCD) have greater difficulty in changing disgust compared to fear reactions (Armstrong & Olatunji, 2017; McKay, 2006)
These results show that individuals did not rate images differently at baseline between the experimental conditions, though there were between-subject differences between the two groups for the initial disgust experience
The results show that people with C-OCD have a stronger initial disgust experience and that they can reduce the disgusting experience to the same extent than the healthy control sample, which is contrary to our hypothesis 2
Summary
Disgust and fear are important maintaining factors in the contamination-related subtype of obsessive–compulsive disorders (C-OCD, Cisler et al, 2009), yet studies have shown that people with C-OCD have greater difficulty in changing disgust compared to fear reactions (Armstrong & Olatunji, 2017; McKay, 2006). In former studies, it was found that imagery rescripting (ImR) and cognitive reappraisal reduced disgust in people with C-OCD more effectively than a distraction-related control condition (Fink & Exner, 2019; Fink et al, 2018). The results provide motivation for further investigation of imagery strategies to change pathological disgust more successfully In these studies, ImR was applied with the aim of changing the affective meaning of aversive memories and intrusive mental images (Wild et al, 2008) by changing the content of a negative image into a positive image (Holmes et al, 2007). Strong feelings of disgust and anxiety are maintaining factors in contamination-related obsessive–compulsive disorder (C-OCD) To this day there are not many studies that investigated strategies for changing pathological disgust. Conclusions The present study provides first indications that imagery in general can help to change pathological disgust experience
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