title: Uncertainty, God, and scrupulosity: Uncertainty salience and priming God concepts interact to cause greater fears of sin.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Difficulties tolerating uncertainty are considered central to scrupulosity, a moral/religious presentation of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We examined whether uncertainty salience (i.e., exposure to a state of uncertainty) caused fears of sin and fears of God, as well as whether priming God concepts affected the impact of uncertainty salience on those fears.
  
  
  METHODS
  An internet sample of community adults (N = 120) who endorsed holding a belief in God or a higher power were randomly assigned to an experimental manipulation of (1) salience (uncertainty or insecurity) and (2) prime (God concepts or neutral).
  
  
  RESULTS
  As predicted, participants who received the uncertainty salience and God concept priming reported the greatest fears of sin. There were no mean-level differences in the other conditions. The effect was not attributable to religiosity and the manipulations did not cause negative affect.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We used a nonclinical sample recruited from the internet.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results support cognitive-behavioral models suggesting that religious uncertainty is important to scrupulosity. Implications of these results for future research are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Baylor University, USA. Electronic address: Thomas_Fergus@baylor.edu.
authors.forename: Thomas A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Fergus
authors.affiliation: Baylor University, USA.
authors.forename: Wade C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Rowatt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D012067:Religion; D035501:Uncertainty; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Fears of sin; God; Intolerance of uncertainty; Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); Scrupulosity