Evaluación del cumplimiento de los objetivos Sennova

Levels of obsessionality and responsibility as measured by the VOCI, SOAQ and RAS did not appear to have an effect on behaviours related to obsessionality across the three groups or within the individual experimental groups. It had been predicted that overall the high obsessionality group would show more obsessionality behaviour than the low obsessionality group. However, it was also predicted that priming obsessionality related values would over-ride the level of obsessionality such that those in the conservation priming condition would show more of the behaviours in both the high and low obsessionality groups whilst the openness priming condition would show the least behaviours across the high and low obsessionality groups. These results are interpreted below in relation to the priming and obsessionality literature.

4.3.3.1 Relationships between primes and obsessionality

Although the statistical analysis did not show any meaningful relationships between the high and low obsessionality/responsibility groups and the behaviours, there were some interesting patterns within the descriptive data (see results sections 3.4.3 & 3.4.4) which supported the fact that the prime over-rode the levels of pre-existing obsessionality and responsibility as predicted. Specifically it was noted that for the cleaning behaviour those within the conservation group had the highest proportion of wipe use across the high and low obsessionality groups whilst the openness to change group had the lowest proportion of wipe use as had been predicted. However, the openness to change group showed this pattern in the opposite direction to what was expected (i.e. they showed more use of wipes in the low obsessionality group and less use of wipes in the high obsessionality group) which may have led to no differences being found in the statistical analysis overall.

The cleaning behaviour in relation to the high and low responsibility beliefs groups showed a similar pattern of results to those above when looking at the descriptive data, but again the statistical analysis found no significant effects. In this case the conservation group again had a higher proportion of cleaning wipe use in both the high and low responsibility groups but with more seen in the low responsibility group

155 than the high which was not as expected. The openness to change group had the least wipe use overall with less use in the low responsibility group and more use in the high responsibility group as would be expected.

As noted these patterns of results were not supported statistically but are commented upon here in relation to the strength of the priming paradigm used. With regards to the cleaning behaviour it is of interest that the prime had stronger effects on the proportion of wipe use than the levels of obsessionality or responsibility as measured by the questionnaires (and as also supported by Hypothesis 1). The proposed mechanisms for why the cleaning behaviour may have shown this effect while the other behaviours did not have been discussed elsewhere. Briefly, it is proposed that the conservation priming task may have been successful at activating certain concepts related to obsessionality (i.e. contamination and cleanliness; e.g. Calamari et al, 1999; Lechman et al, 1997) but not others, which may have led to participants engaging in the cleaning behaviour to fulfil the primed motivation underlying this behaviour (Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz et al, 2012).

4.3.3.2 Obsessionality and responsibility as dispositional tendencies

In relation to the fact that no statistically significant differences were found between the high and low obsessionality or responsibility groups and the behavioural measures there are two points of consideration. The first is that these results are in contrast to some aspects of the values priming literature in that there are often interactions seen between priming values and related pre-dispositional tendencies as we expected to see here. For example, Hart & Albarracin (2009) found that priming achievement only led to achievement based perseverance behaviour in those with a pre-dispositional achievement focused personality trait. Similarly Smeesters et al (2003) found that pro-social primes had effects on cooperative behaviour when individuals had a pre-existing (i.e. prior to the prime) dispositional tendency towards being pro-social. This is similar to what we expected within the current study, in that those with higher dispositional tendencies towards obsessionality would be more likely to perform the obsessionality related behaviours.

However, the second point is that in relation to the obsessionality literature these results may not seem as surprising. When we consider that obsessionality appears

156 to exist as a continuum in the general population (e.g. Clark & Rhyno, 2005; Belloch

et al, 2004; Mathews et al, 2004) it has been indicated that it is not the presence of

symptoms alone that accounts for clinical levels of obsessionality (e.g. Salkovskis et

al, 2005; Berry & Lasky, 2012). Indeed in order for obsessionality to lead to

behaviours related to obsessionality there needs to be a motivated direction for the behaviour and the motivations proposed by current theories are around significant anxiety and misinterpretations of obsessions as well as responsibility beliefs (e.g. Salkovskis et al, 2000). Whether the current study was successful at motivating the obsessionality behaviours has been mentioned elsewhere. Although responsibility has been proposed as a significant mediating factor between obsessionality and anxiety (e.g. Rheaume et al, 1995) it is apparent from the current study that the presence of both obsessionality and responsibility is not enough to motivate obsessionality related behaviours but that these concepts need to be activated (e.g. Verplanken & Holland, 2002) in order to lead to directed behaviour. Indeed it has been demonstrated by Arntz et al (2007) that manipulating perceived responsibility in an experimental study can lead to higher obsessionality symptoms being reported and higher levels of checking behaviour. This suggests that responsibility does have a role to play in mediating the effects of obsessionality when responsibility is activated to be salient to the individual rather than just as a dispositional tendency.

4.3.3.3 Summary for section 3

As previously the presence of higher obsessionality alone was not enough to lead to obsessionality related behaviours and this was also the case for the responsibility behaviours. This can be interpreted in line with obsessionality being a continuum in the general population (e.g. Clark & Rhyno, 1995) and is consistent with priming research which indicates that pre-dispositional tendencies often interact with a prime to lead to behaviour (e.g. Hart & Albarracin, 2009; Smeesters et al, 2003). The effect of the priming task for the cleaning behaviour appeared to override the obsessionality and responsibility pre-dispositions although for other behaviours stronger motivations to perform the behaviour may need to be primed.

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