title: Not just right experience: is it influenced by feelings of guilt?
abstract: Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience increased guilt. Further, these individuals often report uncomfortable sensations of things being not quite right ("not just right experiences"--NJREs). As to the relation between these psychological phenomena, it was hypothesized that feelings of guilt may enhance NJRE. In two experiments, we demonstrated that the induction of a guilty emotion resulted in increased NJRE, and this finding was qualified by an interaction with trait guilt. Induced guilt was followed by stronger feelings of things being not just right only in high-trait-guilt participants. In the low-trait-guilt participants NJRE was weaker. Moreover, we found a meaningful relationship between both NJRE and trait guilt and OCD features.
authors.affiliation: Scuola di Specializzazione in Psicoterapia Cognitiva, Associazione di Psicologia Cognitiva (APC), Viale Castro Pretoria, 116, 00100-Rome, Italy. mancini@apc.it
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mancini
authors.forename: Amelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gangemi
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Perdighe
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002605:Character; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires