A contribute to the default-interventionist and parallel accounts in deductive reasoning. The effect of decisional styles on logic and belief.

Classical theories of reasoning equate System 1 with biases and System 2 with correct responses. Refined theories of reasoning propose the parallel model to explain the two systems. The first purpose of the present article is to give a contribution to the debate on the parallel and default-interventionfist models: we hypothesized when logic and belief conflict both logical validity and belief judgments will be affected with greater level of response errors and/or longer response times. The second purpose of this article is to assess the relationship between decisional styles and performance in deductive reasoning. Seventy-two participants participated in the experiment and completed 64 modus ponens and modus tollens syllogistic reasoning tasks. Accordingly, we found that belief and logic judgments were affected by the conflict condition, both in easy syllogisms (i.e., modus ponens) and in complex syllogisms (i.e., modus tollens). Findings showed also that participants with a rational decision-making style were more strongly influenced by logic than belief, whereas those with an intuitive decision-making style were more strongly influenced by belief than logic.

Deontological and Altruistic Guilt Feelings: A Dualistic Thesis.

In this paper we argue in favor of the existence of two different guilt feelings: altruistic guilt (AG) and deontological guilt (DG). AG arises from having harmed, through one's own action or omission, an innocent victim, while DG arises from the transgression of an internalized norm. In most daily experiences of guilt feelings both types are present, but we argue that they are not traceable to each other and that each can be present without the other. We show that the two guilt feelings can be distinguished with reference to behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological aspects. Moreover, we demonstrate that they are differently related to other processes and emotions. AG is connected with pain, empathy and ToM. DG is strongly related to disgust. We briefly illustrate some implications for moral psychology and clinical psychology.

Emotional Reasoning and Psychopathology.

One of the several ways in which affect may influence cognition is when people use affect as a source of information about external events. Emotional reasoning, ex-consequentia reasoning, and affect-as-information are terms referring to the mechanism that can lead people to take their emotions as information about the external world, even when the emotion is not generated by the situation to be evaluated. Pre-existing emotions may thus bias evaluative judgments of unrelated events or topics. From this perspective, the more people experience a particular kind of affect, the more they may rely on it as a source of valid information. Indeed, in several studies, it was found that adult patients suffering from psychological disorders tend to use negative affect to estimate the negative event as more severe and more likely and to negatively evaluate preventive performance. The findings on this topic have contributed to the debate that theorizes the use of emotional reasoning as responsible for the maintenance of dysfunctional beliefs and the pathological disorders based on these beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to explore this topic by reviewing and discussing the main studies in this area, leading to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon.

Two Reasoning Strategies in Patients With Psychological Illnesses.

Hyper-emotion theory states that psychological disorders are conditions in which individuals experience emotions that are appropriate to the situation but inappropriate in their intensity. When these individuals experience such an emotion, they are inevitably compelled to reason about its cause. They therefore develop characteristic strategies of reasoning depending on the particular hyper-emotion they experience. In anxiety disorders (e.g., panic attack, social phobia), the perception of a disorder-related threat leads to hyper-anxiety; here, individuals' reasoning is corroboratory, adducing evidence that confirms the risk (corroboratory strategy). In obsessive-compulsive disorders, the threat of having acted in an irresponsible way leads to both hyper-anxiety and guilt; here, individuals' reasoning is refutatory, adducing only evidence disconfirming the risk of being guilty (refutatory strategy). We report three empirical studies corroborating these hypotheses. They demonstrate that patients themselves recognize the two strategies and spontaneously use them in therapeutic sessions and in evaluating scenarios in an experiment.

Reducing Probability Overestimation of Threatening Events: An Italian Study on the Efficacy of Cognitive Techniques in Non-Clinical Subjects.

OBJECTIVE: Our study was aimed at evaluating the efficacy and stability of the "Pie Technique", "Cumulative Probability" and "Inverted Pyramid", cognitive techniques applied in a clinical context to reduce overestimation of the probability of threatening events. METHOD: 319 healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of 8 groups. Groups differed on the level of trait anxiety (high vs. low), and on the cognitive techniques they were to receive (Pie Technique, Cumulative Probability, Inverted Pyramid, Control task). All groups were exposed to an intervention aimed at reassigning the initial probability estimate. RESULTS: In both high and low trait anxiety individuals, all the techniques successfully produced a statistically significant reduction in the estimation of the perceived probability, while no significant outcome was found in the control task group. This effect was significantly maintained at a 4 week follow up. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that the Pie Technique, the Cumulative Probability and the Inverted Pyramid reduce the estimation of the perceived probability of negative events occurring in both high and low trait anxiety individuals. This effect was considerably maintained at a 4 week follow up. The reduction should mainly be attributed to the technique's power in contrasting the cognitive mechanism of hyper-focalization. The present study takes into account only general threatening events, and not threats specifically related to the different disorders. Moreover, it demonstrates that all the techniques are useful to reduce danger overestimation but in a group of non-clinical individuals. We can't thus generalize our results to anxious patients.

Deontological guilt and obsessive compulsive disorder.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The emotion of guilt plays a pivotal role in the genesis and maintenance of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). But what kind of guilt do OC patients want to prevent? Several studies suggest the existence of two different types of guilt emotions, namely deontological and altruistic guilt. This research suggests that the former, more than the latter, is involved in OCD. Studies in which people must hypothetically choose between killing one person to save a few (consequentialist choice) or take no action and allow things to take their course (omission choice), have found that the latter is consistent with the "Do not play God" moral principle whereas the former is consistent with altruistic motivations. This paper is aimed at verifying whether both OC patients, with no induction, and nonclinical participants, after the induction of deontological guilt prefer omission more often than a consequentialist option. It is hypothesized that people with OCD will be motivated to avoid feeling deontological guilt and thus will be more likely to opt for omission. Similarly, nonclinical participants who receive a deontological guilt induction will also be more likely to choose omission. METHOD: In two studies participants were given seven scenarios (four moral dilemmas, three control scenarios). Twenty patients with OCD, 20 anxious controls, and 20 healthy participants took part in study 1. In study 2, we recruited 70 healthy participants who were randomly assigned to receive a deontological guilt or a control induction. RESULTS: Consistent with hypotheses, in Study 1 OC patients preferred omission, instead of the consequentialist option, moreso than did the clinical and nonclinical controls. In Study 2, the group receiving the deontological guilt induction preferred omission to a greater extent than did the altruistic group. LIMITATIONS: The present study cannot establish that the goal of preventing or neutralizing deontological guilt actually drives obsessions and compulsions. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide further evidence that people with OCD are more sensitive to deontological guilt, compared to other people. They thus contribute to improve the moral appraisal theory of OCD.

The relevance of maintaining and worsening processes in psychopathology.

The states called "psychopathology" are very diverse, but Lane et al.'s single-process explanation does little to account for this diversity. Moreover, some other crucial phenomena of psychopathology do not fit this theory: the role of negative evaluations of conscious emotions, and the role of emotions without physiological correlates. And it does not consider the processes maintaining disorders.

An experimental re-examination of the inferential confusion hypothesis of obsessive-compulsive doubt.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The inferential confusion hypothesis postulates that obsessive doubt is perpetuated by a subjective form of reasoning characterized primarily by a distrust of reality and an overreliance on imagined possibilities. However, experimental evidence for this hypothesis may be compromised by a potential confound between type of information (reality vs. possibility) and its valence (danger vs. safety). In the present study we aimed to untangle this potential confound. METHODS: Forty OCD and 40 non-clinical participants underwent two versions of the Inferential Processes Task (Aardema, F., et al. (2009). The quantification of doubt in obsessive-compulsive disorder. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 2, 188-205). In the original version, the reality-based information is congruent with the safety hypothesis, whereas the possibility-based information is congruent with the danger hypothesis. In the modified version incorporated in the present study, the reality-based information is congruent with the danger hypothesis, whereas the possibility-based information is congruent with the safety hypothesis. RESULTS: Our findings did not support the inferential confusion hypothesis: both OCD and control participants changed their estimations of the probability of unwanted events based on the type of information they received (whether it conveyed danger or safety) regardless of whether it was framed as reality or possibility. LIMITATIONS: The design of the present study does not lend itself to examining alternative explanations for the persistence of doubt in OCD. CONCLUSIONS: The hypothesized inferential confusion in OCD requires further validation. It is particularly important to demonstrate that findings do not reflect a prudential reasoning strategy.

Behavior as information about threat in anxiety disorders: a comparison of patients with anxiety disorders and non-anxious controls.

BACKGROUND: Gangemi, Mancini, and van den Hout (2012) argued that anxious patients use safety behaviors as information that the situation in which the safety behaviors are displayed is dangerous, even when that situation is objectively safe. This was concluded from a vignette study in which anxious patients and non-clinical controls rated the dangerousness of scripts that were safe or dangerous and in which the protagonist did or did not display safety behaviors. Patients were more likely to take safety behavior as evidence that the situation was dangerous, especially in safe situations. Their non-clinical group may not have been psychologically naïve. We critically replicated the Gangemi et al. study using a psychologically non-informed control group. METHOD: The same materials were used and patients (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Phobia; n = 30 per sub-group) were compared to matched non-patients. Using Bayesian statistics, data from the Gangemi et al. samples and the present groups were (re-)analyzed testing the hypothesis relative to non-patients, patients infer threat from safety behaviors, especially if displayed in safe situations. RESULTS: The Gangemi et al. data yielded a Bayes factor of 3.31 in support of the hypothesis. The present Bayes Factor was smaller (2.34), but strengthened the support for the hypothesis expressed by an updated Bayes factor of 3.31 × 2.34 = 7.75. CONCLUSIONS: The finding that anxious patients infer threat from safety behaviors, in particular in safe contexts, was corroborated, suggesting one way in which safety behaviors are involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders.

Behavior as information: "If I avoid, then there must be a danger".

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive models of anxiety disorders view safety-seeking behaviors (i.e., avoidance, washing, etc.) as playing a crucial role in the maintenance of irrational fear. An explanation of how these behaviors may contribute to the maintenance of unrealistic beliefs is that patients use their safety behaviors as a source of information about the situation (behavior as information): the behavior is clear evidence of the danger. This study investigates whether, relative to non-clinical control participants, anxious participants actually infer danger on the basis of their safety behaviors, rather than on the basis of objective information. METHODS: Three groups of individuals affected by anxiety disorders (31 obsessive-compulsive participants, 22 panic participants, and 17 participants with social phobia) and a group (31) of non-clinical controls rated the danger perceived in scripts in which information about objective safety vs. objective danger, and safety behavior vs. no-safety behavior were systematically varied. RESULTS: As expected, anxious participants were influenced by both objective danger information and safety behavior information, while the non-clinical controls were mainly influenced by objective danger but not by safety behavior information. The effect was disturbance specific, but only for individuals with social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. CONCLUSIONS: The tendency to infer danger on the basis of the use of safety behavior may play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders.

Not just right experience: is it influenced by feelings of guilt?

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience increased guilt. Further, these individuals often report uncomfortable sensations of things being not quite right ("not just right experiences"--NJREs). As to the relation between these psychological phenomena, it was hypothesized that feelings of guilt may enhance NJRE. In two experiments, we demonstrated that the induction of a guilty emotion resulted in increased NJRE, and this finding was qualified by an interaction with trait guilt. Induced guilt was followed by stronger feelings of things being not just right only in high-trait-guilt participants. In the low-trait-guilt participants NJRE was weaker. Moreover, we found a meaningful relationship between both NJRE and trait guilt and OCD features.

Feeling guilty as a source of information about threat and performance.

OCD patients experience increased feelings of guilt, threat and uncertainty about harm prevention. As to the relation between these phenomena, it was hypothesised that the experience of guilt acts as "information" that increases the sense of threat and decreases the sense that preventive action is effective. We tested whether state guilt is used as information about risk and prevention effects and whether people high in trait guilt do so more than others. Participants high and low in trait guilt were included. Three types of affect were experimentally induced: guilt, anxiety and a neutral affect. Then, participants estimated the likelihood and severity of a negative outcome, and the dissatisfaction with preventive performances in two OCD relevant scenarios. Relative to low-trait guilt participants, people high in trait guilt had higher ratings of risk after induction of state guilt. With regards to dissatisfaction with preventive performance, there was only a trend for high-trait guilt participants to respond stronger to state guilt. The results suggest that people with a general inclination to feel guilty use temporary feelings of guilt as information about the threat content of a situation and do so even if the source of state guilt is unrelated to the situation. Implications for the understanding of OCD are discussed.

A hyper-emotion theory of psychological illnesses.

A hyper-emotion theory of psychological illnesses is presented. It postulates that these illnesses have an onset in which a cognitive evaluation initiates a sequence of unconscious transitions yielding a basic emotion. This emotion is appropriate for the situation but inappropriate in its intensity. Whenever it recurs, it leads individuals to a focus on the precipitating situation and to characteristic patterns of inference that can bolster the illness. Individuals with a propensity to psychological illness accordingly reason better than more robust individuals, but only on topics relevant to their illness. The theory is assessed in the light of previous research, a small epidemiological study of patients, and 3 empirical studies.

The role of responsibility and fear of guilt in hypothesis-testing.

Recent theories argue that both perceived responsibility and fear of guilt increase obsessive-like behaviours. We propose that hypothesis-testing might account for this effect. Both perceived responsibility and fear of guilt would influence subjects' hypothesis-testing, by inducing a prudential style. This style implies focusing on and confirming the worst hypothesis, and reiterating the testing process. In our experiment, we manipulated the responsibility and fear of guilt of 236 normal volunteers who executed a deductive task. The results show that perceived responsibility is the main factor that influenced individuals' hypothesis-testing. Fear of guilt has however a significant additive effect. Guilt-fearing participants preferred to carry on with the diagnostic process, even when faced with initial favourable evidence, whereas participants in the responsibility condition only did so when confronted with an unfavourable evidence. Implications for the understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are discussed.

Fear of guilt from behaving irresponsibly in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Previous cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) propose that inflated responsibility plays a key role in the maintenance of symptoms (Behav.Res.Ther. 28 (1985) 571). In this manuscript, we propose that this thesis may be improved by emphasizing that instead, OCD may be characterized by a fear of guilt that would result from behaving irresponsibly and/or from not behaving responsibly. We believe that this concept provides a better explanation for the anxious and fearful nature of OCD than do more traditional conceptualizations of inflated responsibility. We support this idea with empirical evidence and propose that OCD symptoms are consistent with patients acting in a prudential mode because of their fears of guilt.

Responsibility, guilt, and decision under risk.

We hypothesize that individuals' choices (risk-seeking/risk-aversion) depend on moral values and, in particular, on how subjects evaluate themselves as guilty or as victims of a wrong rather than on the descriptions of the outcomes as given in the options and evaluated accordingly as gains or losses (framing effect). People who evaluate themselves as victims are expected to show a risk-seeking preference (context of innocence). People who evaluate themselves as guilty are expected to show a risk-averse preference (context of guilt). Responses of 232 participants to a decision problem were compared in four different conditions involving two-story formats (innocence/guilt) and two-question-options formats (gain/loss). Regardless of the format of the question options, the story format appears to be an important determinant of individuals' preferences.

Role of responsibility in conditional reasoning.

A series of recent studies showed that facilitation on the Wason Selection Task could be produced by perceived utilities. The present work was aimed at testing whether a similar factor could also be involved in human reasoning performance in the context of responsibility. We supposed that the motivation of the subject assuming responsibility is affected by normative goals. These goals prescribe the actions and the results to be achieved, also considering the different social roles. In this experiment the responses of different groups of subjects (N = 270) to a selection task were compared in two different conditions involving different responsibility contexts. The results show that the subjects' strategies in searching for possible violators depended on the condition (responsibility vs no responsibility). In particular, only in the context of responsibility were the performances elicited by conditional rules characterised by a falsification strategy.