TY - JOUR
T1 - Individuals with high obsessive-compulsive tendencies or undermined confidence rely more on external proxies to access their internal states
AU - Zhang, Zhongming
AU - Wang, Mengyun
AU - Miao, Xiaocui
AU - Li, Yijuan
AU - Hitchman, Glenn
AU - Yuan, Zhen
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported, in part, by MYRG 2014-00093-FHS , MYRG 2015-00036-FHS and MYRG2016-00110-FHS Grants from the University of Macau , as well as FDCT 026/2014/A1 and 025/2015/A1 Grants from the Macau Government . This research was also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 31171006 ); China Scholarship Funding ( 201306995011 ); and research team building programs of the Faculty of Psychology (SWU) in 2012 ( TR201205-5 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2017/3
Y1 - 2017/3
N2 - Background and Objectives The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) hypothesis predicts that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with a deficit in subjective convictions, which may lead to a reliance on external substitutes for the perceptions of an individual's internal states. Two well-designed studies were performed for the present work that adopted a false bio-feedback procedure in a muscle tension task to examine the SPIS hypothesis. Methods The false bio-feedback paradigm was used to investigate our hypothesis. NeXus-10 Mark II hardware and V2011 BioTrace + software (Mind Media B.V., Herten, Netherlands) were utilized to measure the muscle tension of the flexor carpiulnaris muscle, which characterized the target's internal state. In addition, false EMG changes were recorded and displayed on a computer monitor and were considered external proxies. Results Study 1 demonstrated that the participants with high obsessive-compulsive (OC) tendencies were more affected by the false bio-feedback and exhibited lower confidence in their judgments regarding their muscle tension compared with the participants with low OC tendencies. These findings indicate that subjects with high OC tendencies were more influenced by self-perception effects. In contrast, the subjects in the undermined confidence group in Study 2 were more easily influenced by the false bio-feedback compared with the control group, which suggests that the subjects in the undermined confidence group were more affected by self-perception effects. Limitations We did not combine the undermined confidence with OC tendencies or OCD symptoms in our paradigm to investigate their joint effects on self-perception. Conclusions Our findings provide further evidence that supports the SPIS hypothesis, which indicates that OC tendencies and the confidence in an individual's recognition of internal states appear to have similar effects on the assessment of internal states and reliance on proxies.
AB - Background and Objectives The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) hypothesis predicts that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with a deficit in subjective convictions, which may lead to a reliance on external substitutes for the perceptions of an individual's internal states. Two well-designed studies were performed for the present work that adopted a false bio-feedback procedure in a muscle tension task to examine the SPIS hypothesis. Methods The false bio-feedback paradigm was used to investigate our hypothesis. NeXus-10 Mark II hardware and V2011 BioTrace + software (Mind Media B.V., Herten, Netherlands) were utilized to measure the muscle tension of the flexor carpiulnaris muscle, which characterized the target's internal state. In addition, false EMG changes were recorded and displayed on a computer monitor and were considered external proxies. Results Study 1 demonstrated that the participants with high obsessive-compulsive (OC) tendencies were more affected by the false bio-feedback and exhibited lower confidence in their judgments regarding their muscle tension compared with the participants with low OC tendencies. These findings indicate that subjects with high OC tendencies were more influenced by self-perception effects. In contrast, the subjects in the undermined confidence group in Study 2 were more easily influenced by the false bio-feedback compared with the control group, which suggests that the subjects in the undermined confidence group were more affected by self-perception effects. Limitations We did not combine the undermined confidence with OC tendencies or OCD symptoms in our paradigm to investigate their joint effects on self-perception. Conclusions Our findings provide further evidence that supports the SPIS hypothesis, which indicates that OC tendencies and the confidence in an individual's recognition of internal states appear to have similar effects on the assessment of internal states and reliance on proxies.
KW - Obsessive-compulsive tendencies
KW - Proxy
KW - Reliance
KW - Self-perception effect
KW - Undermined confidence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84989314258&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.09.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.09.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 27710870
AN - SCOPUS:84989314258
SN - 0005-7916
VL - 54
SP - 263
EP - 269
JO - Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
JF - Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
ER -
