A Cross-Cultural Replication of Fear About Guilt as the Secondary Emotion Hypothesis Across with and without Clinical OCD Samples: The Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of Fear of Guilt Scale

Fear of guilt is a variation of the secondary emotion or meta-emotional disturbance that can transform nonclinical emotions into emotional disturbance or make it worse. The purpose of the present study was to explore the psychometric properties of the Persian version of fear about guilt scale and to examine the role of fear of guilt (as a secondary emotion) and guilt as a primary emotion across samples with and without a clinical OCD (N = 727, F = 67%; Mean_Age = 26.76). The two-factor model (punishment and harm prevention) was confirmed and demonstrated measurement invariance with acceptable reliability and validity. In the clinical OCD sample, just right was predicted only by primary emotions while checking was predicted by secondary emotions and indecisiveness and obsession were predicted by primary and secondary emotions, however, the aforementioned did not predict contamination. In the nonclinical OCD sample, checking, obsession, and hoarding were predicted by primary emotions, while just right and contamination were predicted by secondary emotions and indecisiveness was predicted by both primary and secondary emotions. These results indicate that people who experience OCD symptoms in the form of guilt are more likely to be at risk for developing clinical OCD at the disordered level. Fear of guilt might play a key role in explaining certain subscales of clinical and nonclinical OCD, and therefor this scale could be used as a reliable and valid tool to test the secondary emotion hypothesis.