Uncertainty, God, and scrupulosity: Uncertainty salience and priming God concepts interact to cause greater fears of sin

Abstract

Background and objectives: Difficulties tolerating uncertainty are considered central to scrupulosity, a moral/religious presentation of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We examined whether uncertainty salience (i.e., exposure to a state of uncertainty) caused fears of sin and fears of God, as well as whether priming God concepts affected the impact of uncertainty salience on those fears.

Method: An internet sample of community adults (N = 120) who endorsed holding a belief in God or a higher power were randomly assigned to an experimental manipulation of (1) salience (uncertainty or insecurity) and (2) prime (God concepts or neutral).

Results: As predicted, participants who received the uncertainty salience and God concept priming reported the greatest fears of sin. There were no mean-level differences in the other conditions. The effect was not attributable to religiosity and the manipulations did not cause negative affect.

Limitations: We used a nonclinical sample recruited from the internet.

Conclusions: These results support cognitive-behavioral models suggesting that religious uncertainty is important to scrupulosity. Implications of these results for future research are discussed.

Keywords: Fears of sin; God; Intolerance of uncertainty; Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); Scrupulosity.