Maintanance of disgust – a validation of the Chain of Contagion Task

Tolin, Worhunsky and Maltby (2004) developed the Chain of Contagion Task for the experimental verification of the law of contagion. The main result of the study was that participants with contamination-related obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were convinced of the transmission of contamination across multiple steps significantly longer than patients with anxiety disorders and healthy controls. The goal of the present study is the validation of an online version of the Chain of Contagion Task and the constructive replication of the original study in German-speaking countries. As in the original study, participants with OCD will be compared to an anxious and a healthy control-group with regard to their beliefs about infection. An online version that induces disgust in a similar way and depicts potential contamination could be more economical, acceptable and reasonable. It also makes an important contribution to disgust research by being used consistently to measure beliefs in connection with contamination, disgust and infection.