There is reason to believe that morality--beliefs of right and wrong–-is linked to the manifestation of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), due to their heightened sense of responsibility. Previous literature shows that, when confronted with trolley problem scenarios, OCD patients differ in their responses to non-OCD participants, with OCD patients flipping the switch less than non-OCD counterparts in scenarios presented. Based on this, this study aims to examine how OCS interfere with moral decision-making, namely, whether moral decision-making preferences of those with high prevalence of OCS change based on whether potential victims in the scenario include someone familiar, and when the number of potential victims increases. Non-clinical participants recruited online (N = 158) were presented with a questionnaire containing trolley problems which varied in their parameters of whether a victim was close/familiar to the respondent ('familiarity'), and how many people were on each train track ('human loss'). Three generalized linear mixed models were fit to data. The first model included all of the predictors, the second included two-way interactions between familiarity, human loss, and OCS, and the third included a three-way interaction between all three. Contrary to expectations and past research, OCS was not significantly associated with trolley problem responses, though patients were 705.68 times significantly more likely to flip the switch in scenarios where familiarity and human loss were high. These results may suggest that concerns of saving those familiar to you, and saving as many people as possible, can have a stronger effect compared to OCS on moral decision-making. However, results of this study may not be generalizable due to a low sample size. Further research is needed to explore this dynamic more robustly.
Sera Pensoy (Thu,) studied this question.