Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Mental contamination (MC) refers to feelings of dirtiness or contamination that are experienced in the absence of any physical contaminant. This feeling is often brought on by thoughts or memories of immoral acts, betrayal, and/or shame, and is common in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Researchers have found that when people are told to think about immoral situations (either hypothetical, or real events from their past), they tend to experience feelings of dirtiness, and are more likely to wash themselves to alleviate such feelings. Victims of sexual assault have also been found to experience MC, and it has been induced in experimental studies in which people listened to a recording of a non-consensual kiss and imagined being the victim or the perpetrator. While past studies have found certain factors to be associated with the severity of MC that people experience (i.e. participants' perception of personal responsibility, violation, and immorality), we still do not know the mechanisms through which this relationship functions. In the present study, we aim to understand the role that perception of personal responsibility plays on the degree of MC a person feels after being told to imagine that they are the protagonist in a sexual harassment recording. A better understanding of the mechanisms underlying MC will help to inform therapeutic interventions aimed at reducing MC in individuals with OCD or post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from sexual trauma.