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

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.