ABSTRACT LOOKING OUTSIDE OF SELF AND EXPERIENCE: EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE DISTANCING ON INTRUSIVE THOUGHT RESPONSES by Sarah Lily Adut Metacognitive methods that create cognitive distance between an individual and their negative thoughts have demonstrated beneficial effects, including reducing avoidance and distress, and increasing meaning-making in response to negative thoughts. Two dimensions of cognitive distancing, self-distancing and experiential distancing, may help clarify mechanisms through which cognitive distancing leads to adaptive versus harmful outcomes. The current study examined self-distancing and experiential distancing in response to intrusive thoughts, which are unpleasant, unwanted thoughts that have been implicated in the development and maintenance of a variety of clinical problems including obsessive-compulsive disorder. Participants (N=212) wrote about an intrusive thought from one of three perspectives that varied according to whether they were self- immersed or self-distanced, as well as whether they were experientially immersed or distanced. Greater degrees of cognitive distancing were anticipated to reduce negative reactions to an intrusive thought and increase self-compassion. Partial support for the hypotheses was found; simultaneously engaging in self-distancing and experiential distancing increased self-compassion as predicted. Consistent with prior literature, the combination of both distanced perspectives most strongly predicted beneficial outcomes. This study clarifies mechanisms of cognitive distancing and identifies possible benefits of utilizing cognitive distancing in the context of intrusive thoughts. LOOKING OUTSIDE OF SELF AND EXPERIENCE: EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE DISTANCING ON INTRUSIVE THOUGHT RESPONSES A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Sarah Lily Adut Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019 Advisor: Joshua C. Magee, Ph.D. Reader: Terri L. Messman-Moore, Ph.D. Reader: April R. Smith, Ph.D. ©2019 Sarah Lily Adut This Thesis titled LOOKING OUTSIDE OF SELF AND EXPERIENCE: EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE DISTANCING ON INTRUSIVE THOUGHT RESPONSES by Sarah Lily Adut has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Science and Department of Psychology ____________________________________________________ Joshua C. Magee, Ph.D. ______________________________________________________ Terri L. Messman-Moore, Ph.D. _______________________________________________________ April R. Smith, Ph.D. Table of Contents List of tables………………………………………………………………...iv List of figures……………………………………………………………......v Introduction………………………………………………………………….1 Method………………………………………………………………………5 Sample………………………………………………………………..5 Intrusive thought and writing task……………………………………6 Materials………………………………………………………………6 Procedure……………………………………………………………10 Analytic Plan………………………………………………………...11 Results……………………………………………………………………...11 Sample characteristics……………………………………………….11 Responses to intrusive thoughts……………………………………..12 Exploratory analyses………………………………………………...13 Discussion………………………………………………………………….14 References………………………………………………………………….20 Appendices…………………………………………………………………24 Appendix A: Tables…………………………………………………24 Appendix B: Figures………………………………………………...27 Appendix C: Measures………………………………………………28 iii List of Tables Table 1: Sample Characteristics and Baseline Affect by Condition.............24 Table 2: Single-Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) Stimuli.…...25 Table 3: Pearson and Spearman correlations between Implicit and Explicit Measures.…………………………………………………………………...26 iv List of Figures Figure 1: Sample SC-IAT screen…………………………………………27 v Acknowledgments I would first like to thank Dr. Joshua Magee for his guidance, support, and good humor throughout the course of this project, from its inception to its completion (and beyond). I would also like to thank Drs. April Smith and Terri Messman-Moore for their service on my committee and for their insightful feedback that has strengthened and refined this project significantly. I am similarly grateful for the contributions of the SCOUT lab, its undergraduate and graduate members alike, who have aided in the development and execution of the study and helped foster my growth and well-being as a new researcher and academic. Guidance and insight from the ACE lab have also been foundational to the success of this project. The remainder of my gratitude goes to members of my graduate cohort for the stellar companionship and commiseration that we have shared. And my mom, too. vi People relate to their thoughts in different ways, and those metacognitive approaches can meaningfully impact mental health. Individuals may view their thoughts as literal representations of reality or as subjective interpretations (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006), from their own point of view or from an outside perspective (Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel, 2005), as meaningful or less meaningful (Hayes et al., 2006), and from any number of other perspectives. An example of the impact of metacognitive perspectives can be found in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a disorder theorized to result partially from catastrophized interpretations of intrusive thinking (Salkovskis, 1999; Rachman, 1997). Cognitive models of OCD suggest that intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images, and urges are normative and experienced by most healthy individuals without significant distress or impairment (Rachman, 1997). However, interpretations of intrusive thinking as evidence that one is “bad, mad, or dangerous” (Rachman, 1997) or as being one’s fault or responsibility (Salkovskis, 1999) can lead to distress, greater recurrence of the intrusive thoughts, and increased desire to engage in neutralizing behaviors or compulsions. Cognitive therapies for OCD aim to change the interpretations of thoughts through techniques such as cognitive restructuring. These therapies demonstrate similar effectiveness in reducing obsessive-compulsive symptomatology to exposure and response prevention, commonly considered to be the gold standard treatment for OCD (Öst, Havnen, Hansen, & Kvale, 2015). While cognitive theories and treatments for OCD provide examples of metacognitive influences on negative thoughts, other metacognitive approaches may also have the potential to reduce unhelpful interpretations of intrusive thoughts, such as increasing the cognitive distance from which one views those thoughts. Cognitive distancing encompasses many types of distancing, including self-distancing, or witnessing one’s experiences as a third-person observer. When thinking about an experience, individuals may feel very much as though they are experiencing it through their own eyes, or they may view the event from an outsider’s perspective (Kross & Ayduk, 2011). Self-distancing involves shifting one’s perspective from the former to the latter. When reading this paper, for instance, you likely have been relatively self-immersed and focused on the content of this document and your thoughts on it. Self-distancing might instead entail consideration of the way your act of reading appears from an outside perspective. In fact, reading the last two sentences may have caused you to self-distance to some degree. Self-distancing typically reduces affect, arousal, and physiological reactivity to emotional stimuli when compared to self-immersion 1 (Ayduk & Kross, 2008; Gruber, Harvey, & Johnson, 2009). A moderate degree of both self- immersion and self-distancing is normative among healthy individuals across a variety of thought contents, and a degree of each may be beneficial in different contexts (Ayduk & Kross, 2010). When interacting with negative memories, for instance, self-distancing can reduce short- term arousal and blood pressure reactivity, while self-immersion can heighten positive affect when interacting with positive memories (Ayduk & Kross, 2010; Ayduk & Kross, 2008; Gruber et al., 2009). Thus, effective matching of distancing or immersion to the affective tenor of mental experiences may result in enhanced emotional outcomes. For intrusive thinking, which is typically followed by negative emotional reactions, self-distancing may serve to temper the immediate negative emotional impact. Despite the promising implications of self-distancing, the work of Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel (2005) suggests that a self-distanced vantage point alone does not lead to decreased negative affect when interacting with memories. Instead, they suggest that self-distancing may only be effective in conjunction with a particular type of self-focus. Specifically, a self-distanced focus on what happened in a distressing memory (distanced-what) has not been found to reduce negative affect or distress in healthy samples. Only a combination of a self-distanced vantage point and a focus on why events took place and why an emotional reaction was experienced (distanced-why) has been found to reduce negative affect in that context (Kross et al., 2005). When individuals take a distanced-what perspective, concrete and immediate facets of the memory surface that lead to superficial attributions and the reexperiencing of intense and specific emotions (Kross et al., 2005). Together, these features make it more difficult for individuals to maintain psychological distance (Kross et al., 2005). Such research converges with findings that observer perspective (without an explicit why focus), defined as a third-person perspective of one’s experiences, is actually associated with rumination and general and