title: Hypochondriasis: the role of fear-confirming reasoning.
abstract: We investigated whether hypochondriacal patients are prone to selectively search for danger-confirming information when asked to judge the validity of conditional rules in the context of general and health threats. Therefore, hypochodtriacal patients (n = 27) and a healthy control group (n = 27) were presented with modified Wason Selection Tasks (WSTs) pertaining to general and health threats. The WSTs contained safety rules (If P then safe) and danger rules (If P then danger). Subjects adopted a verificationistic strategy in case of danger rules and tended to look for falsifications in case of safety rules. This danger-confirming reasoning pattern was similar for both types of contexts and not particularly pronounced in hypochondriacal persons. These findings argue against the idea that such a reasoning pattern directly causes hypochondriasis. Yet, in the presence of anxiogenic (hypochondriasis related) convictions such danger-confirming reasoning pattern logically serves to maintain or even enhance hypochondriacal complaints.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Abnormal Psychology, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Haenen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mayer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003210:Concept Formation; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006998:Hypochondriasis / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011340:Problem Solving