Is it more disgusting if I think about it? Examining the interaction of obsessive beliefs and disgust propensity in clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder

Independent lines of research have identified disgust propensity and obsessive beliefs to be important affective and cognitive processes in contamination symptoms. In non-clinical samples, a previous study integrated these lines of research and found that disgust propensity more strongly predicted two different measures of contamination fears when obsessive beliefs – particularly overestimation of threat – were higher, suggesting that cognitive factors potentiate the role of disgust propensity in contamination fear. The present study aimed to replicate these findings in a sample of 103 patients with OCD. Unexpectedly, while disgust propensity was related to two self-report measures of contamination fears, obsessive beliefs were not. Moderation analyses failed to reveal an interaction between disgust propensity and obsessive beliefs in predicting contamination fear. It is suggested that disgust propensity is more relevant to clinical contamination fears than are obsessive beliefs – either directly or as a moderating factor. Implications for theory and treatment are discussed.