The “Arnold Schwarzenegger Effect”: Is strength of the “victim” related to misinterpretations of harm intrusions?

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Abstract

The present study used an in vivo paradigm to examine whether the victim's vulnerability in a harm-related intrusion affects beliefs about the importance of thoughts (i.e., Thought Action Fusion; TAF). Sixty-six undergraduate students at a large university were randomly assigned to imagine either a vulnerable (e.g., elderly man) or able-bodied individual (e.g., strong youthful male) they know getting into a car accident and provided in vivo ratings of anxiety, guilt, likelihood, moral wrongness, and urges to neutralize. Results indicated that thinking of car accident involving a vulnerable, compared to an able-bodied person, provoked more distress (anxiety and guilt), stronger feelings of moral wrongness, greater urges to cancel the effects of thinking such thoughts, and higher estimates of the likelihood that the collision would occur. The findings of our study broadly support Rachman's (1998) assertion that more significance and importance is attached to negative thoughts about vulnerable or helpless people. Current findings are discussed in terms of the cognitive-behavioral model of obsessions and clinical implications are addressed.

Highlights

► We examined whether the victim's vulnerability in a harm-related intrusion affects TAF through an in vivo paradigm. ► 66 undergraduates were assigned to imagine either a vulnerable or able-bodied individual getting into a car accident. ► Thinking of a vulnerable, compared to an able-bodied person, in a car accident provoked greater TAF ratings. ► Therefore, more importance is attached to negative thoughts about vulnerable or helpless people. ► The findings of our study broadly support Rachman's (1998) cognitive model of obsessions.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 66 undergraduate students (59% female) at a large university in the southeastern United States who completed an online “screening” questionnaire battery, gave permission to be contacted for possible participation in the present study, and who subsequently attended an experimental session in our laboratory. The sample was 67.2% Caucasian, 14.8% Asian, 8.2% Hispanic, 8.2% African American, and 1.6% reporting being of “other” ethnic backgrounds. The group's mean age was 20.47

Sample characteristics

Four participants (two in each group) provided unusable data and therefore were excluded from further analyses. Specifically, one participant did not follow instructions and thought about a famous athlete rather than a person he or she knows. Other participants skipped VAS ratings. Exclusion of these 4 participants brought the group sizes to 34 (Strong condition) and 28 (Weak condition). Table 1 presents the group means (and standard deviations) and frequencies on the demographic and

VAS ratings

Table 2 displays the group means and standard deviations for the VAS ratings (0–100) of (a) anxiety and (b) guilt related to having written and thought about the car accident, (c) estimated likelihood of such an accident occurring in the next week, (d) how morally wrong it is to write and think about this individual having a car accident, and (e) the urge to neutralize anxiety or the effects of writing and thinking about the accident. As can be seen in the table, mean VAS ratings for all

Discussion

The present study used an in vivo paradigm to examine whether the vulnerability of the victim in a harm-related intrusive thought affected appraisals of the importance or dangerousness of the thought (i.e., TAF). In particular, we investigated whether imagining a negative outcome befalling a known vulnerable (e.g., elderly) or able-bodied (e.g., strong and younger) man affected ratings of state anxiety and guilt, as well as beliefs about the moral wrongness of thinking such thoughts and the

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