Although obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can be treated, research has shown that people with the disorder tend to have a lower quality of life than neurotypical people. Many struggle to achieve the same levels of education and financial stability as people with the disorder.

In a recent Clinical psychological science studyResearchers theorized one cognitive process could be to blame: Decision Making. In their November study, karolina lempert and her co-authors examined decision making in People with Ocd. To do so, they focused on two measures, delay discouncing and risk tolerance.

The researchers are the first looked at delay discounting, which is the tendency to prefer instant rewards to that you have to wait for, even when the delayed reward is great. Researchers someimes describe delay discouncing as a measure of impulsiveness. In Previous Studies, People with Higher Delay Discounting Scores was more like to have problems with addition, overspending, and sedentary behavior.

Previous Studies have also also shown that people with Ocd tend to have Rav Risk Tolerance – A Measure of Someone’s willingness to gamble on a decision with uncertain out Decision when the outcome is unknown, lempert said.

Lempert and her team hypotesized people with Ocd would have high delay discussing and low risk tolerance – Making Decision Making even Harder. This is comparable to the strain that a neurotypical person feels when they are presented with many choices and feel unable to decide, also know as decision paralysis.

They examined this theory by study 268 people with OCD and 256 People with OCD from Brazil, India, Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. None of the participants were medicated during the study.

The Researchers Ran 51 trials of a test designed to measure delay discouncing. Participants were asked to choose between receiving a smaller amount of money immediatily or a larger amount of money. For example, a person would be asked Whether they preferred receiving $ 10 dollars immediatily or $ 25 in 100 days.

After Controlling for Factors Like Sex, Age, and Education, Lempert and Colleagues Found People with Oc Oc OCD Had Simlar Delay Discounting to Participants with Participants without Ocd. There, however, some differentness with the OCD Group Itself. Thos with the condition who also had hight levels of confounding conditions like anxiety had a great a greence for immedial rewards than did people with

“It was pretty clear that there was no difference between people with ocd and healthy controls on that task and in that prefererance, which to me, waste to that surprising,” lempert safrising, “Lemperty not that surprise.

She said these results challenge the notion that in most psychiatric disorders, people struggle with high levels of delay discouncing. If it holds True that delay discouncing is only al aned in certain conditions, then psychiatrists may be able to use its presence to diagnose

“The more that we discover what symptoms exactly are linked to what decision tendencies, we might have a better a better way of predicting Specifically for Individuals What We Might Expect from t said.

The resarchers then ran 60 trials of a test designed to measure risk aversion, where participants presented with Would Gamble to receive a larger amount of money. For example, a person would be asked whether they wanted $ 1 for certain or take a gamble with 50% odds for earning $ 10.

They are no significant differential Lempert said previous Studies also found this result. Lempert’s study featured a bigger, more diverse size than advance research.

Because they found delay discounting and risk tolerance was not already in people with Ocd, lempert suggested that other tests of cognition and decision making may be more fruitful for reserchers to stuckers.

“Just Knowing that specifications will really help in the future for developing more individualized interventions,” Lempert said.