A number of clinical constructs have been identified and causally linked to obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms (Davey, 2003). These constructs aim to capture the beliefs, attitudes, and thought patterns associated with OC symptoms, and examples of such constructs include intolerance of uncertainty (IU; Beech and Liddell, 1974) and inflated responsibility (Salkovskis, 1985). In addition to the aforementioned clinical constructs, negative mood has also been casually linked to OC symptoms. For example, Salkovskis and Freeston (2001) proposed that negative mood may increase the occurrence of intrusive thoughts, increase the accessibility of negative assumptions, increase the likelihood of inadequate appraisals and decrease the efficacy of dismissal, suppression, and other neutralizing strategies. Whilst on occasion two or more of these clinical constructs maybe connected together in a causal model (see, e.g., Lind and Boschen, 2009) more often these constructs are treated as separable and as having separable causal effects on OC symptoms. The aim of the present study is to examine if clinical constructs related to OC symptoms and negative mood are best treated as separable or, alternatively, if these clinical constructs and negative mood are best seen as indicators of an underlying superordinate variable or variables.

Consistent with the idea that constructs are separable, constructs are usually measured using separate inventories or subscales (see, e.g., Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions Working Group [OCCWG], 1997) and constructs have been manipulated independently of one another to examine their effect on OC symptoms (e.g., Ladouceur et al., 1995). Most theories are silent on any potential relationship between constructs or explicitly state they believe constructs to be separable (e.g., Summerfeldt, 2004, 2007) and, when constructs are examined together within a single study, they are usually placed head to head against one another to see which construct “best” predicts OC symptoms (e.g., Steketee et al., 1998) – an approach which emphasizes the supposed separable nature of the constructs and the differences, as opposed to the similarities, between them. This approach is often taken in studies even when the relevant constructs have been shown to be at least moderately correlated with one another within the same study (e.g., Steketee et al., 1998).

However, emerging research suggests that constructs may interact to increase OC symptoms and that constructs themselves may be causally interrelated. For example, using a mediation model, Lind and Boschen (2009) found that the relationship between inflated responsibility and checking was fully mediated by IU. In a series of three experiments that explored the causal relationships between inflated responsibility, IU and negative mood, Britton and Davey (2014) found that all three constructs were causally interrelated. Similarly, Dash and Davey (2012) found that manipulating negative mood casually affected the deployment of as-many-as-can (AMAC) stop rules, whilst Britton (2011, unpublished) found that manipulating inflated responsibility increases the intensity of “not just right experiences” (NJRE).

Britton and Davey (2014) interpreted their results within a motivational systems approach. In this approach emotions such as anxiety are seen as features of a ‘precautionary system’ that simultaneously alerts the individual to challenges and threats to goals, and coordinates cognitive and behavioral reactions in order that the individual can respond more effectively to these challenges and threats. Individual threat management systems such as this will be characterized by a functional coherence in which perceptual, affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes work together to reduce the fitness costs of potential threats (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Keltner et al., 2006). As perceptual, affective, cognitive, and behavioral elements are all part of an integrated evolved functional system, we would expect these elements to be highly coordinated and interdependent, with the affective experience being an emerging property of the activation of the various functional elements in the system (Kenrick and Shiota, 2008; Neuberg et al., 2011). Britton and Davey (2014) argued that if disorders such as OC disorder (OCD) are fundamentally derived from anxiety as an adaptive emotion then one implication of the motivational systems view is that emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements characteristic of anxiety should be coordinated and interdependent within the threat management system relevant to anxiety, and the integrated nature of the relationships between negative mood and constructs such as inflated responsibility and IU are supportive of such a view. Rather than one set of factors (e.g., constructs) being causes of a different set of factors (e.g., affect), they are all integrated components of an anxiety precautionary system that promotes a ‘cascade’ of relevant perceptions, cognitions, behaviors, and affective experience conducive to solving the adaptive problem (Kenrick et al., 2010).

The primary purpose of this paper is to further examine the underlying relationship between four constructs related to OCD and negative mood. Specifically, the primary aim of the current study was to examine if these clinical constructs and negative mood are separable or if they are indicators of a single superordinate variable, as would be suggested by a motivational system approach, or, alternatively, if they are indicative of a different number of underlying variables. Due to the large number of clinical constructs linked to OCD within the literature, the authors’ chose to include only those constructs which have been shown to be casually related to each other and/or with negative mood within the literature.

In addition to negative mood, the clinical constructs IU and inflated responsibility were measured in the current study as evidence suggests they have bidirectional relationships with both negative mood and with each other (Britton and Davey, 2014). IU is defined as a “dispositional characteristic that arises from a set of negative beliefs about uncertainty and its connotations and consequences” (Birrell et al., 2011, p. 1200) and is underpinned by appraisals such as ‘uncertainty is dangerous,’ ‘uncertainty is intolerable,’ and ‘I can’t deal with uncertainty’ (Koerner and Dugas, 2006). Inflated responsibility is defined as the belief that one has the power to bring about or prevent subjectively crucial negative outcomes (Salkovskis, 1985; Rachman, 1998).

Two further constructs were also measured in the current study as evidence suggests that they are causally facilitated by negative mood, IU or inflated responsibility (Britton, 2011, unpublished; Dash and Davey, 2012) and therefore these constructs may potentially be coordinated and interdependent within any relevant threat management system. NJREs can be defined as, “the subjective sense that something isn’t just as it should be,” an unsettled feeling due to something in the individual or in the world around them not being right (Coles et al., 2003). The final construct focused on in this paper is “AMAC” goal-directed stop rules for checking. Stop rules can be best explained by linking them to task motivation. Broadly, two specific types of task motivation have been proposed, performance focused motivation and task focused motivation (Vaughn et al., 2006). A performance motivated individual who engages in a task will be focused on meeting a certain standard or criteria whilst engaged in that task. The person motivated in this way is likely to continue with the task until they have met their given standard or criteria for that task (e.g., Hirt et al., 1996). In contrast, a task motivated individual who engages in a task will do so without concern about evaluation or without any particular performance standards for the task. A person using AMAC stop rules whilst engaged in a task (such as checking or worrying) is analogous to someone using performance focused motivation, the individual’s AMAC stop rule for that task will encourage them to continue with the task until they are sure they have met whatever their specific criteria or standard was for that task.

It is of note that all four constructs measured in the current study have been shown to have a causal effect on OC symptoms (Ladouceur et al., 1995; Coles et al., 2005; MacDonald and Davey, 2005; Toffolo et al., 2013) and each have also been linked to anxiety related symptoms (Ladouceur et al., 2000; Coles et al., 2003; Startup and Davey, 2003) making an exploration of the relatedness of these constructs also of relevance to anxiety disorders. In summary, the primary aim of the current study is to explore the underlying relationships between negative mood and four OC symptom related constructs which recent evidence suggest are causally interrelated. A threat management system approach would suggest that each construct and negative mood would be best depicted as an indicator of a single superordinate variable whilst, if constructs and negative mood are separable, we would predict that a five factor model would be the best depiction of these relationships, with each of the four constructs and negative mood, respectively, represented by a single factor. Plausible arguments could be made for other factor solutions. For example, Summerfeldt’s (2004; 2007) model of OCD proposes two core, continuous, orthogonal dimensions to explain the motivational processes important to the development and maintenance of OCD: harm avoidance (as characterized by inflated responsibility) and incompleteness (as characterized by NJRE). This model would suggest that NJRE and inflated responsibility should be represented by two separate factors. However, it would be difficult to predict based on this model if negative mood, for example, should load onto either of these two factors or a separate factor.

In order to explore the factor structure underlying the four constructs and negative mood an exploratory factor analysis was first carried out in order to ascertain possible factor structures underlying the relationships between the four measured constructs and negative mood. Any emerging plausible models based on the findings of this exploratory factor analysis were then directly compared with one another using confirmatory factor analysis.

The analyses reported in this paper demonstrate that inflated responsibility, IU, NJRE, AMAC stop rules, and negative mood are best seen as five separate variables rather than as indicators of an underlying superordinate variable or variables. The exploratory factor analysis suggested two plausible factor structures, one where all construct items and negative mood items loaded onto one underlying superordinate variable, and a second structure comprising of five factors, where each item loaded onto a factor representative of what the item was originally intended to measure (i.e., all IU items loading only onto factor 1, or the IU factor, all RAS items loading only onto factor 2, or the inflated responsibility factor, etc.). A confirmatory factor analysis showed that the five factor model was preferential to the one factor model, suggesting the four constructs and negative mood are best conceptualized as separate variables.

The results of the present study are therefore not supportive of a motivational systems approach in relation to explaining the relationships between constructs related to OC symptoms and negative mood (Britton and Davey, 2014). Such an approach would suggest that, as the constructs measured and negative mood are highly coordinated and interdependent within the relevant threat management system, they should all load onto one superordinate variable representative of that threat management system. Rather, the results of the present study suggest the four constructs and negative mood are separable and therefore support the fact that each of the clinical constructs are generally discussed, measured and manipulated separately from each other within the OCD literature. The results are also supportive of those theories which suggest that the constructs are separable, for example, Summerfeldt’s (2004, 2007) model of OCD which proposes two dimensions to explain the motivational processes important to the development and maintenance of OCD: harm avoidance (as characterized by inflated responsibility) and incompleteness (as characterized by NJRE). In addition, the results of the present study are supportive of those theories which suggest that clinical constructs and negative mood are separable, for example, Salkovskis et al.’s (2000) model which suggests that inflated responsibility and negative mood are separate but causally interrelated variables which both increase the occurrence of intrusive thoughts. Cognitive treatments for OCD and anxiety disorders are often based on addressing the types of clinical constructs measured in the current paper (e.g., inflated responsibility, Kohlenberg and Vandenberghe, 2007; IU, Dugas and Ladouceur, 2000). The results of the present study support the idea that it possible to separately address the clinical constructs measured in the current study in the treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders.

The finding that the constructs measured and negative mood seem to be separable rather than indicators of a core underlying variable raises a question: how do we explain bidirectional causal relationships between negative mood with constructs related to OC symptoms, and the bidirectional relationship between constructs themselves (e.g., Britton and Davey, 2014), if they are not indictors of one superordinate variable?

One possibility is that although constructs related to OC symptoms and negative mood are unique and separable entities they are entities which to some extent overlap with one another, as indicated by the fact that all four constructs measured in the current study and negative mood appear to correlate moderately with one another. As such, the manipulation of one construct or negative mood will have a causal influence on other constructs measured (or negative mood), due to the overlapping relationship between the relevant constructs and negative mood.

Another possibility is that that while constructs related to OC symptoms and negative mood represent unique and separable entities, they are all connected to a third variable which mediates the relationship between them. One potential candidate for mediating the relationship between inflated responsibility, IU and negative mood (Britton and Davey, 2014) is that all three constructs affect information processing style, and in particular trigger systematic processing of information. Systematic processing is a bottom-up, data-driven, and comprehensively analytic style in which perceivers access and scrutinize all informational input for its relevance and importance to their judgment, and integrate all information in forming their judgment (Chaiken et al., 1989). Negative mood has been shown experimentally to facilitate systematic processing (Batra and Stayman, 1990; Tiedens and Linton, 2001; Ambady and Gray, 2002) as have a range of situational and dispositional factors including responsibility, accountability, desire for control, personal relevance, and task importance (Sorrentino et al., 1988; Chaiken et al., 1989; Batra and Stayman, 1990; Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991; Lee et al., 1999; Tiedens and Linton, 2001; Ambady and Gray, 2002) and many of these factors are likely to be enhanced by feelings of inflated responsibility and IU. For example, feelings of IU have been linked to increases in desire for control (Krohne, 1993) whilst increases in inflated responsibility are likely to lead to an increased sense of task importance (Salkovskis, 1985). Negative mood in particular provides information that characterizes a situation as problematic and fosters the spontaneous adoption of a systematic, detail-oriented, bottom-up processing style (Schwarz, 1990). Increasing feelings of responsibility will also signal a situation as problematic and foster systematic processing (Chaiken et al., 1989) – but only if the outcomes for which the individual feels responsible are appraised as having potentially harmful or threatening outcomes, a characteristic typical of the OC explanatory construct of inflated responsibility (Salkovskis, 1985). An increase in IU will increase the desire for control (Krohne, 1993) and this in turn will also foster systematic processing (Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991). Thus, inflated responsibility, IU, and negative mood are all factors that potentially have an integrated relationship with a specific information processing style which may explain the bidirectional causal relationships between them. Activation of that common processing style through increases in inflated responsibility, IU or negative mood, respectively, is likely to lead to an increase in scores on the other two constructs, as all three constructs are associated with increases in systematic processing. It is also of note that those individuals with OCD and OC tendencies use a more controlled information processing style, even under conditions that non-OCD participants use a speed-oriented information processing style (Soref et al., 2008; Kalanthroff et al., 2014).

Whilst the four constructs measured in the current study and negative mood appear to be separate variables, the fact that one factor explained a good deal of shared variance between the four constructs and negative mood in the exploratory factor analysis is of note. Whilst this factor may have simply been artifact of shared method variance, it is possible it maybe representative of a core genetic/biological deficit underlying OC symptoms (e.g., Maia et al., 2008) or anxiety related problems more generally (e.g., Norrholm and Ressler, 2009).

Finally, the present study has a number of limitations. First, given a primarily student sample was used in the present study, it is not clear how generalisable the conclusions of this study are to a clinical population. It should be noted that taxometric studies have suggested that OC related symptoms are generally best considered as dimensional rather than categorical (e.g., Haslam et al., 2005) and many cognitive models of OC symptoms follow a dimensional model (e.g., Frost and Steketee, 2002) supporting the appropriateness of studying OC related phenomena in student samples. However, the validity of the results presented in this paper would be strengthened if they were replicated within a clinical sample. Second, the present study measured only four constructs, and negative mood, and as such did not measure a number of other constructs that have been linked to OC symptoms (e.g., thought-action fusion, Rachman, 1993). Whilst this was done as we wished to include only those constructs which have been connected causally through experimental manipulation, it should be noted that the inclusion of other constructs may have led to a different factor structure emerging in the current study. A related limitation of the present study is that OC symptoms and anxiety symptoms which have been linked to the constructs measured in the current study (e.g., worry) were also not measured. Again, the inclusion of OC symptoms and symptoms related to other disorders may have led to a different factor structure emerging in the current study. Finally, only self-report measures were used in the current study. Whilst noting the limitations associated with self-report measures, the authors’ would comment that the constructs measured in the current study are almost exclusively measured by self-report in the wider OC literature, and so measurement of these constructs in this study is consistent with other research in this field.

GB was a Ph.D. student under the supervision of GD. Both authors were involved in the conception of the idea behind this paper. GB collected and analyzed the data used in the paper, and wrote up the original paper, advised by GD. GD contributed to the writing of later drafts of the paper.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.