Inflated perceptions of responsibility are hypothesized to contribute to compulsive checking. Reassurance seeking, proposed to be a form of checking, may exacerbate checking behaviour in the long run. A sample of non-clinical participants (N = 100) performed a complex manual classification task under 1 of 4 experimental conditions: high responsibility-high reassurance, high responsibility-low r...

OBJECTIVE Prefrontal mechanisms are implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder. The authors investigated whether prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation influenced obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms. METHOD Twelve patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder were given repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (80% motor threshold, 20 Hz/2 seconds per minute for 20 minu...

Human beings differ in sexual makeup. Most adults are not sexually attracted to prepubescent children, but some are. Societal values can be of relevance in determining whether such a difference is considered to be a psychiatric condition. Were a society to believe that adult-child sexual interactions should not be prohibited, such a difference might not be viewed as a disorder. According to Dia...

BACKGROUND Tobacco counter-advertising is effective at promoting smoking cessation. Few studies have evaluated the impact of alcohol warning advertising on alcohol consumption and possible mechanisms of effect. This pilot study aimed to assess whether alcohol warning advertising is effective in reducing urges to drink alcohol, if emotional responses to advertising explain any such effect or per...

One psychosocial factor that has been identified to motivate gambling is personal relative deprivation (PRD), which refers to resentment stemming from the belief that one is deprived of a desired and deserved outcome compared to some referent. Although several lines of evidence point to a positive association between PRD and the urge to gamble, the factors that might moderate this relation have...

Introduction:The aim of the current study was to assess the impact of an intervention aimed at communicating the negative reinforcement explanation for smoking, a set of ideas derived from popular selfhelp books, upon participants' cognitions and urges to smoke. Methods: Smokers (n = 205) undergoing standard stop-smoking treatment were randomised to receive either the experimental intervention,...

INTRODUCTION Anxiety-related characteristics, including anxiety sensitivity and trait anxiety, are elevated in individuals with alcohol and nicotine dependence and associated with greater difficulties with quitting smoking. However, little is known about how anxiety-related characteristics are related to smoking cessation outcomes in alcohol-dependent smokers. The present study, part of a large...