Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of perceived responsibility and neuroticism upon distress and obsessive-compulsive behaviors during the capsule classification task. The dependent variables were Distress and Obsessive-compulsive Behaviors. Distress was measured by conviction, doubt, preoccupation with errors, urge to check, discomfort experienced during the task and subjective number of errors made during the classification. Obsessive-compulsive behaviors was measured by hesitation, checking, modifications, number of errors made and time to complete the cask. Subjects were 60 undergraduate students(31 subjects were scored high on neuroticism and 29 subjects were scored low on neuroticism). All subjects were assigned randomly to either the high perceived responsibility condition or the low perceived responsibility condition. The results were as follows: 1. Other than hesitation, all other measures of obsessive-compulsive behaviors showed non-signification differences between high and low levels of perceived responsibility. 2. There were non significant interaction effects of perceived responsibility and neuroticism on all measures of distress except doubt. Therefore, for the high perceived responsibility condition, high level of doubt was seen for subjects with high neuroticism, versus those with low neuroticism. Consequently, the results of this study suggest that increase in neuroticism and perceived responsibility could lead to partially increased subjective distress and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Further, treatment for OCD may be effective if perceived responsibility and neuroticism were decreased.