The “Arnold Schwarzenegger Effect”: Is strength of the “victim” related to misinterpretations of harm intrusions?
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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2022, Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related DisordersCitation Excerpt :For instance, by manipulating the personal significance of the victim in the intrusion template, Berman, Wheaton, and colleagues (2011) found that those who imagined a catastrophic event befalling a beloved friend or family member reported greater TAF-like beliefs, distress, urges to neutralize and engaged in more mental neutralizing behaviors, when compared to those who imagined harm coming to a community member. Similarly, imagining harm coming to a vulnerable individual (e.g., elderly and feeble man), provoked greater likelihood TAF beliefs, in vivo ratings of guilt, anxiety, moral wrongness, and urges to neutralize, when compared to those who imagined a catastrophic event befalling a healthy individual (e.g., able-bodied 20-year-old; Berman, Wheaton, & Abramowitz, 2012). In vivo paradigms designed to elicit distress associated with these beliefs require participants to write down statements such as about harm befalling loved ones.
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