The Origins of Inflated Responsibility: Investigating the Relationship between Adaptive Responsibility, Inflated Responsibility and Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms in Young People.

Background and Objectives Inflated responsibility is proposed to be a central concept in the development and maintenance of obsessive compulsive symptoms (Salkovskis, 1985). Five pathways to inflated responsibility have been proposed (Salkovskis et al., 1999) but have largely remained untested. Two of these pathways refer to experiences of having insufficient or excessive amounts of typical everyday childhood or ‘adaptive’ responsibilities. These two pathways were tested by the current study be examining the relationships between adaptive responsibilities, inflated responsibilities, and obsessive compulsive symptoms. Method The study used a cross-sectional correlational questionnaire design to assess for levels of adaptive responsibilities, inflated responsibilities, and obsessive compulsive symptoms in 134 young people aged between 11 and 16 years, and one of their parents. Results Significant positive associations were observed between levels of inflated responsibility and obsessive compulsive symptoms in young people and parents. There was also a significant positive relationship between child and parent ratings of adaptive responsibility. However, no relationships were observed between adaptive responsibility and inflated responsibility, or obsessive compulsive symptoms. Additionally, there were no between group differences observed for groups scoring high or low in levels of adaptive responsibility, inflated responsibility, or obsessive compulsive symptoms Conclusion Findings appeared to support the inflated responsibility hypothesis of OCD in childhood and extend support to a downward extension of adult models of OCD to children. However, the findings did not support the notion of childhood experiences of insufficient or excessive amounts of adaptive responsibilities to be implicated in the development of OC symptoms. Methodological flaws limit the generalisability of these findings and further research may benefit from considering accumulative or interactions of experiences on the pathways hypothesised by Salkovskis et al. (1999)