Approach-avoidance, attentional and evaluation biases in hair pulling disorder and their relationship with symptom severity

Joyce Maas*, Ger P. J. Keijsers, Mike Rinck, Eni S. Becker

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
100 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The present study examined approach-avoidance, attentional and evaluation biases in Hair Pulling Disorder (HPD). Although none of the tasks showed indications of biased action tendencies in response to hair pulling-related pictures, or biased attention for hair pulling-related words, we found that patients were slower to react to hair pulling-related stimuli than to neutral stimuli. This slowing down may indicate that patients are ambivalent towards hair pulling. This ambivalence positively correlated with HPD symptom severity, but only on one of the three severity measures we assessed. Concerning action tendencies towards hair pulling-related words, patients were, however, faster to react to hair pulling-related words when compared to words related to resisting hair pulling. Future research is needed to disentangle this ambivalent response pattern in HPD.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)743-753
JournalJournal of Cognitive Psychology
Volume30
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Hair pulling disorder
  • approach-avoidance bias
  • evaluation bias
  • attentional bias
  • RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED-TRIAL
  • BEHAVIOR-THERAPY
  • TRICHOTILLOMANIA
  • IMPLICIT
  • RESPONSES
  • DRINKERS
  • CUES

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