If you suffer from a headache, then you have a brain tumour: domain-specific reasoning 'bias' and hypochondriasis

We explored whether hypochondriacal patients selectively search for threat- confirming information when asked to judge the validity of conditional rule s in the context of general and health threats. We also explored several fa ctors that may underly participants' information selection (e.g., believabi lity of the rule). Hypochondriacal patients (n = 20) and healthy controls ( n = 20) were presented with modified Wason Selection Tasks (WSTs). The WSTs contained safety rules and danger rules. In the context of general threat, both groups of participants adopted a verificationistic strategy in the ca se of danger rules and a Popperian strategy in the case of safety rules. Im portantly, only hypochondriacal persons showed a similar threat-confirming reasoning pattern in the context of health threat. The latter finding contr asts with the earlier study of de Jong et al. (1998) [de Jong, P. J., Haene n, M.-A., Schmidt, A., & Mayer, B. (1998a). Hypochondriasis: the role of fe ar-confirming reasoning. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 65-74, de Jong , P. J., Mayer, B., van der Hijden, B., Bogels, S., & van den Hout, M. (199 8b). Better safe than sorry: reasoning with conditionals in the context of threat. Submitted for publication.] in which both hypochondriacs and health y controls showed a threat-confirming strategy in the domain of health thre at. The WSTs in that study however, contained a (unintended) worry manipula tion ("after hearing this, you get worried"). which might have induced a re asoning strategy in controls that is normally restricted to hypochondriacs. Taken together, the present results sustain the idea that the perception o f threat activates a better safe than soi sorry strategy. In the case of ph obic threats, such a reasoning strategy immunizes against refutation of pho bic convictions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.