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Parsons, Carly Annette

University of British Columbia

Reassurance-seeking (RS) is a common anxiety-management strategy used by individuals with a range of mental health challenges, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Research in this area has primarily focused on interpersonal forms of this behaviour. However, interpersonal RS presents social and emotional risks, which individuals with OCD are aware of and sometimes try to circumvent with more covert strategies. This dissertation systematically explores the use of online platforms as an alternate RS approach, which has not yet received devoted research attention in this population. Of key interest were the relative frequencies of online and interpersonal RS, unique relationships with specific OCD symptom types, the relative effectiveness of these strategies in reducing distress, and individual and situational factors that may motivate preferences for each. This program of research includes five studies, conducted in both clinical and non-clinical samples and using a range of methodologies. In Studies 1 and 2 (cross-sectional), the frequency of online RS correlated with obsessive-compulsive symptom severity and was uniquely predicted by “taboo” obsessions, self-conscious emotions, and feared self-beliefs. In Study 3 (quasi-experimental), clinical and control groups completed an anxiety-provoking writing task. After the task, participants in both groups indicated a preference for interpersonal RS over online RS, but this preference was weaker among participants with OCD. In Study 4 (qualitative), participants answered questions about their primary reasons for preferring reassurance from each source. Qualitative analyses identified self-concealment as a common motivator of online RS, particularly for participants with OCD. In Study 5 (longitudinal), participants recorded their daily RS behaviours across seven days. Although the clinical group sought more reassurance overall, interpersonal RS was more frequent than online RS in both groups. However, participants with OCD were more likely to report using both interpersonal and online RS in the same day. Clinical participants also felt less reassured after RS, and this did not seem to differ by reassurance type. Taken together, online RS appears less popular than interpersonal RS in OCD, but might be used as a supplementary strategy or used preferentially when feeling acutely self-conscious. This research has implications for psychological treatments and for transdiagnostic conceptualizations of RS.

Text

2025-04-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/90568

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/