Pick a Card, Any Card: The Relationship Between Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms and Decision-Making

Abstract

Specific deficits in decision-making have been demonstrated in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The experience of anxious arousal in obsessive-compulsive (OC) patients has been posited to be responsible for disrupting the cognitive processes that lead to efficacious decision-making (Sachdev & Malhi, 2005). In spite of this, research has neglected to examine explicitly the effect of anxiety on the relationship between decision-making and OCD. The current study investigates whether decision-making differences on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) occur as a function of OC symptomatology in a non-clinical sample (n = 110). Participants were randomly allocated to either an anxiety condition (n = 58) or control condition (n = 52). Anxious arousal was induced in the anxiety condition via an experimental manipulation prior to commencing the IGT. Participants in the anxiety condition performed significantly worse than those in the control group on the IGT. However, OC symptomatology did not significantly predict IGT performance. The experience of anxiety did not significantly moderate the relationship between OC symptomatology and IGT performance. These findings indicate that decision-making differences do not occur as a function of OC symptomatology in a non-clinical sample; however, they do suggest that the experience of anxiety significantly impairs decision-making performance. The theoretical and practical applications of the findings are discussed.

Numerical cognitive reflection, but not verbal cognitive reflection, moderates the association between trait anxiety and affective decision‐making

“…In the present study, the heart of the analysis in hierarchical regressions (e.g., interaction) explained a trivial proportion of variance in the dependent variable (1–4%). Compared with the regression effects of similar studies, we found that one study used hierarchical regression to explore the relationship between anxiety and IGT (Leonello & Jones, 2016), and their range of regression effects ( R ‐squared values) is 0.04–0.06, which was similar to our study. Moreover, in other studies focusing on intelligence and IGT, their regression effects ( R ‐squared values) are 0.001–0.17 in Demaree et al (2010) while 0.004–0.202 in Webb et al (2014).…”