Superstitiousness and perceived anxiety control as predictors of psychological distress☆
Section snippets
Participants
Data were collected from 191 participants recruited from introductory psychology classes with a mean age of 20.19 (S.D.=3.87; range 17–45). The sample was composed of 79 males (41%) and 112 females (59%). The majority of the participants were Caucasian (n=155, 86%) with the remainder reporting African American (n=19, 10.2%), Native American (n=2, 1.2%), or Hispanic (n=2, 1.2%) ethnicity, and one person reporting ethnicity other than those listed (.6%).
Superstitiousness Questionnaire
The Superstitiousness Questionnaire (
Results
Prior to conducting the data analyses, the data were screened for appropriateness. Although the data were positively skewed, particularly on the PI subscales, that was not unexpected given that this was a nonclinical sample. Even though the data were skewed, to facilitate interpretation and comparison with other sample data, no data transformations were conducted. When screening for outliers, a number of cases exceeded the z score of greater than ±3.29 (P<.001) guideline for detecting outliers (
Discussion
Results of this study replicate and extend the findings reported by Frost et al. (1993) and provide additional evidence for a relationship between measures of superstitiousness and obsessive–compulsive symptoms in nonclinical individuals. However, this relationship is not exclusive; superstitiousness also has a significant association with (a) measures corresponding to other anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and social phobia, (b) measures of general psychological distress, and (c)
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Andrew Bayne, Andrew Brannon, Erica Schneider, Dana Smith, Katherine Taylor, Allen Tosh, and Marina Valdez for their assistance in data collection and entry.
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A portion of this article was presented at the Annual Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy convention, November, 2000.