Obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms and subjective severity, probability, and coping ability estimations of future negative events.

This paper describes two studies in which 18 participants with OCD (Study 1) and 73 students (Study 2) rated the subjective probability and severity of future negative events, as well as their anticipated coping ability. The negative events were idiographic in that participants wrote and rated events that were particularly salient to them personally. In both samples, results indicated that, as OC symptoms increased, severity estimation increased and coping ability decreased. However, probability estimation increased with OC symptoms in the student sample, but not in the OCD sample. Results also suggested that OC symptoms may relate to the product of probability and severity, divided by coping ability. Regression results indicated that higher probability estimation for students, and worse predicted coping ability for OCD patients, was the most predictive of OC symptoms. Findings are discussed in the context of cognitive theory of OCD. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]