Experience sampling reveals habitual and transdiagnostic properties of compulsivity
8 affiliations
- 1School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
- 2FutureNeuro, the Research Ireland Centre for Translational Brain Science, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
- 3Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK
- 4School of Life and Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
- 5South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust, London, UK
- 6Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA
- 7Center for Computational Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA
- 8Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
Abstract
Both obsessive thoughts and an urge to act have been linked to compulsions cross-sectionally. However, prominent theories of compulsivity disagree quite fundamentally about whether compulsions are goal-oriented attempts to reduce or eliminate obsessive thoughts or are urge-driven and habitual. To shed light on this debate, we used multilevel vector autoregression modelling to analyse contemporaneous and temporal associations based on self-report symptoms and cognition from N = 179 individuals with and without diagnoses who performed compulsions. Six weeks of three-times daily timeseries data with a mean lag of five hours between assessments were gathered from a transdiagnostic sample who checked their phone compulsively, binge ate, or engaged in compulsions commonly seen in OCD (e.g. checking, cleaning). Across compulsions, the strongest within-person correlate of compulsions were urges (β = 0.61, pFDR < 0.001) and this was 3 times larger than obsessive thoughts and 4 times larger than anxiety. We found that urges predicted compulsions at the next assessment time point (β = 0.09, pFDR < 0.001), while compulsions themselves had a markedly low tendency to predict themselves (β = 0.04) compared to the other mental health symptoms sampled (0.12 < β < 0.23). Finally, like habits, compulsions occurred more often when executive functioning was low (β = 0.09, pFDR < 0.001). Based on real-time dynamics of compulsions, we find that urges, but not obsessive thoughts, predict compulsivity five hours later. Intriguingly, the associations were remarkably similar across compulsions, supporting the notion that transdiagnostically, a habit-like mechanism may underlie compulsive actions.
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BibTeX
@article{teckentrup2026experience,
title = {{Experience sampling reveals habitual and transdiagnostic properties of compulsivity}},
author = {Vanessa Teckentrup and Celine A. Fox and Kelly R. Donegan and Eoghan Gallagher and Anna K. Hanlon and Naomi A. Fineberg and Ilenia Pampaloni and Laura A. Berner and Claire M. Gillan},
journal = {Translational Psychiatry},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1038/s41398-026-04350-6},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-04350-6},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Experience sampling reveals habitual and transdiagnostic properties of compulsivity
AU - Vanessa Teckentrup
AU - Celine A. Fox
AU - Kelly R. Donegan
AU - Eoghan Gallagher
AU - Anna K. Hanlon
AU - Naomi A. Fineberg
AU - Ilenia Pampaloni
AU - Laura A. Berner
AU - Claire M. Gillan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/31
JO - Translational Psychiatry
DO - 10.1038/s41398-026-04350-6
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-04350-6
AB - Both obsessive thoughts and an urge to act have been linked to compulsions cross-sectionally. However, prominent theories of compulsivity disagree quite fundamentally about whether compulsions are goal-oriented attempts to reduce or eliminate obsessive thoughts or are urge-driven and habitual. To shed light on this debate, we used multilevel vector autoregression modelling to analyse contemporaneous and temporal associations based on self-report symptoms and cognition from N = 179 individuals with and without diagnoses who performed compulsions. Six weeks of three-times daily timeseries data with a mean lag of five hours between assessments were gathered from a transdiagnostic sample who checked their phone compulsively, binge ate, or engaged in compulsions commonly seen in OCD (e.g. checking, cleaning). Across compulsions, the strongest within-person correlate of compulsions were urges (β = 0.61, pFDR < 0.001) and this was 3 times larger than obsessive thoughts and 4 times larger than anxiety. We found that urges predicted compulsions at the next assessment time point (β = 0.09, pFDR < 0.001), while compulsions themselves had a markedly low tendency to predict themselves (β = 0.04) compared to the other mental health symptoms sampled (0.12 < β < 0.23). Finally, like habits, compulsions occurred more often when executive functioning was low (β = 0.09, pFDR < 0.001). Based on real-time dynamics of compulsions, we find that urges, but not obsessive thoughts, predict compulsivity five hours later. Intriguingly, the associations were remarkably similar across compulsions, supporting the notion that transdiagnostically, a habit-like mechanism may underlie compulsive actions.
SN - 2158-3188
ER -