Religious Identity and Its Relationship to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder among University Youth

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1647422/v1

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Religious Identity and Its Relationship to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder among University Youth

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1647422/v1

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The study aimed to estimate the relationship between religious self-identity and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the relationship affected by both gender and age. The study manipulated a cross-sectional study design. An available sample of 314 Saudi university students was selected. The study relied on the Brown-Yale inventory of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the study prepared a scale of religious self-identity. The stability of the obsessive-compulsive disorder scale ranged between 0.74 and 0.76, while the reliability coefficients for religious self-factors ranged from 0.66 to 0.74. The study found goodness-of-fit of the study tools with the sample data using confirmatory factor analysis. The correlation coefficients between religious identity factors and the obsessive factor were positive, while the relationship was negative between religious identity factors and compulsive behaviors. The results revealed that there are gender differences in the self-reassuring in favor of females due to the influence of the age variable.

Religious identity

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a recurring, chronic, costly, and disabling disorder that appears in many medical settings. It may not be recognized and may not be treated. For many years it was seen as a neurotic disorder that provides insight into the workings of the unconscious mind. Currently, it is visible as an adequate example of a neuropsychiatric disorder (Stein, 2002). Obsessive-compulsive disorder is denoted by curious thoughts or images and obsessions that increase the individual's anxiety, and through repeated actions, the individual tries to get rid of the anxiety. Among the most common symptoms are fears of contamination, the consequences of washing, or fears of harming oneself or others. Obsessive-compulsive disorder can be identified through many physical, religious, physical, and musical symptoms (Stein, 2002).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is developed in different places, and cultural natures, but these symptoms change over time from one to another. Symptoms range from tics to excessive symptoms due to poor eyesight (Stein, 2002). The results showed that I (I refer to the self ego) saw them of impurity, examination, contemplation, and subtlety while transforming into intensity and social phobia (Van Oppen, Hoekstra & Emmelkamp, 1995).

The current study estimated the relationship between religious identity factors from an Islamic perspective and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The research motivation of this paper is to determine the identity of the religious self (the reassuring self, the blameworthy self, the self that commands bad) and its relationship to self-control through the obsessions that accompany the individual to modify the course of his actions, the compulsive behaviors that the individual uses to adapt to the social context, and the extent to which this relationship is affected by age and gender.

Obsessive in Islamic law:

The Noble Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet texts have taken care of the concept of obsessiveness and its different states, whether the obsessive is occasional in the mind for a while or continuous until it is compulsive and harmful to the self by denying it of peace and unconcern and feeling critical psychological pain.

And God, His Majesty, has commanded us to keep away from obsessiveness to seek refuge from its evil in Surat An-Nas, the Almighty said: “Say, I seek refuge in the Lord of people, the King of people, the God of people, from the evil of the obsessive whisperer.”

In the Prophetic Sunnah, there are verbal declarations and practical applications in reprimanding obsessive-compulsive disorder and treating obsessive-compulsive disorder and stopping the paths leading to it, such as overstating self-blame and violence in remorse of conscience.

The Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said regarding the one who is afflicted with obsessiveness, “Let him seek refuge with God and his liberation.”[1] This is an effective treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and self-ambivalence:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterized by two complex phenomena: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are treated as unusual and inappropriate and cause anxiety or psychological distress. Motives are repetitive behaviors or mental acts performed to prevent the reduction of anxiety or distress (Bhar & Kyrios, 2007). Obsessive-compulsive disorder is highly associated with other disorders symptoms, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and other mental disorders. This disorder results from exposure to negative interventions, and this profound clinical obsession developed into a compulsion to do some things exaggeratedly. It is reflected in the thoughts that cause the individual's continuous sadness and some obsessions because of the increased personal responsibility on of that the individual.

Often the individual with OCD believes that he has a constant need to prevent some harmful consequences, avoid unwanted outcomes, and therefore perform some behaviors that lead to the passing thoughts type suppression. A dysfunctional individual's behavior occurs because of the negative cognitive evaluation of intrusive thoughts on the individual's beliefs and frames of reference. Six clinical criteria linked together refer to an individual suffers from OCD are linked (Bhar & Kyrios, 2007; Rachman, 1998; Stein, 2002): symmetry/hoarding, contamination/checking, and pure obsessions (Williams, Mugno, Franklin & Faber, 2013).

Inflated sense of personal responsibility:

Overestimating the threat. It occurs because of varying copying based on negative emotions with negative thoughts. These unwanted thoughts lead to the control of cognitive beliefs because of the internal conflict of the individual. The individual rejects these ideas that distort the self-concept and threatens the self. Rather, the feeling of guilt surrounds the individual and accompanies him in all his actions for long periods, and this is what is called the blameworthy nature.
Inability to tolerate doubt. Suspicion results from the internal contradictions that plague the individual. This discrepancy is related to personal characteristics. The negative interventions of thoughts act as a substitute for internal defeats, which generate conflicting beliefs in his self-characteristics.
In The pursuit of perfection, the individual produces certain behaviors to suppress these intrusive thoughts, reduce feelings of harm, achieve adaptation and a sense of moral integrity, relieve feelings of exacerbation of responsibility, and improve self-image.
Cognitive beliefs are associated with the negative meanings of an individual's thoughts. Undesirable thoughts generate anxiety and struggle on the individual's self-perception and his context treatments. These intrusive thoughts clash with the self-concept. The unwanted compulsive thoughts provoke feelings of guilt and self-loathing.
Exaggerating the reference frameworks and their association with controlling intrusive negative thoughts.

The relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and emotion regulation:

Obsessive-compulsive disorders are associated with impaired impulse regulation. Whereas the repeated usage of emotion-based coping strategies forges a kind of suppression, suppression, and emotional distress (Ferreira, Couto, Sousa, Vieira, Sousa, Picó-Pérez & Morgado, 2021). Obsessive-compulsive disorder generates a social state like social space phobia and conducts compulsive acts that form self-limiting due to a lack of sense of safeness (Segrott & Doel, 2004). This fearful self should yield because of the frequent awareness of negative stereotypes of self, which tend to the fearful self or the blame self (Ferrier & Brewin, 2005).

An increase in self-blame often leads to persistent thoughts, images, and impulses that are experienced as ego-depleting, undesirable. These obsessions are often related to moral systems, shortcomings in religious aspects, or unnatural sexual urges (Chambles & Gillis, 1993). These obsessions affect mood because of a sense of personal responsibility in preventing suffering, or because of the unwholesome characteristics of the self (Rachman, 1998).

The noxious effects of profound thoughts and cognitive distortion often lead to two factors in the person suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder:

Unbiased behavior: It refers to the individual's pursuit of reassuring self-transcendence by ideal behaviors overdoing, the overstatement of personal responsibility causes psychological liability and suspense of threat and danger (Salkovskis, 1985). The meaning of balancing the behavior is to get freed of those thoughts and suppress them (Ferrier & Brewin, 2005).
Repeated negative mood: This condition is caused by a lack of self-acceptance or an effort to determine between the amount of responsibility and the nature of distorted cognitive assessments and the inability to balance them already, because of profound thoughts (Ferrier & Brewin, 2005).

The combination of adverse moods and unbiased behavior increases threat expectation and increased perception of responsibility, which oversees negative thinking (Salkovskis, Wroe, Gledhill, Morrison, Forrester, Richards & Thorpe, 2000). From the arrangement of Rachman (1998), which emphasized that the perceived identity of the obsessive patient is an immoral, strange, or criminal identity that causes serious harm to a person or leads to the rejection of others or inflicting harm on them, and therefore this interpretation may indicate a conflict between the self that commands bad and the reassuring self.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder and its relationship to self-forgiveness:

Self- forgiveness has a triple phenomenon consisting of self-tolerance, tolerance of oneself, the other, and divine tolerance. Tolerance results from the contemplative nature and contemplation of existence. (Palmer, 2020) differentiates between self-forgiveness and interpersonal tolerance in that internal reconciliation is a necessary condition for self-forgiveness, as the different frames of reference that move the ego differ within the individual.

Self-forgiveness may be implicit (false) depending on the type of interaction with people (Hsu, 2021). But if the self is freed of internal reconciliation, conscious feelings of guilt and shame grow, so that the individual transcends the feeling of loss (Vatansever & Ozgur-Ilhan, 2021). And the individual develops a sense of obsessiveness because of over feeling of guilt and negative thoughts about oneself increase, so the individual overstates in performing some behaviors in which he sees salvation from these feelings. The individual becomes a victim of these aversive behaviors (Buonanno, Iuliano, Grossi, Mancini, Stendardo, Tudisco & Pizzini, 2021). Self-forgiveness occurs when the individual uses positive coping strategies that see events in their natural course without exaggeration (Wilt, Stauner & Exline, 2017).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder and its relationship to self- struggleless:

Negative emotional evaluation and intense self-criticism can be increased in social contexts. Negative emotions are already coupled as a defense mechanism to adjust resilience (Costa Jr, Worthington, Montanha, Couto & Cunha, 2021). One's actions may be to calm the internal processes that depend on negative obsessions and compulsions. Self-suffering occurs due to anhedonia resulting from anxiety or misbehavior, or due to some pathological symptoms such as disruption of the reward system in the brain (Abramovitch, Pizzagalli, Reuman & Wilhelm, 2014).

Suffering with oneself takes on behavioral manifestations, such as spiritual and religious conflicts. Tension and conflict grow around certain beliefs, practices, or religious experiences to assess levels of moral and spiritual maturity (Breuninger, Wilt, Bautista, Pargament, Exline, Fletcher & Teng, 2019), because of internal obsessions and compulsions in response to a sense of failure in the right of God. The ego nature is affected due to this conflict and the individual begins to regress to a certain stage, sublimation, escape, or projection (Axness, 2004; Nelson-Becker & Thomas, 2020).

The struggle with the self may be occur because of by a change in the religious or social self-concept, feelings of depression and oppression, or a feeling of inferiority in religious aspects, which makes the individual exaggerate and exaggerate his spiritual behavior, and seek religious perfectionism (Exline, Homolka & Harriott, 2016). Or the obsessive-compulsive disorder may stem from self-tolerance or a personality disorder that made the individual coveted by others and a reason to exploit him (Ellis, 2014).

[1] [Agreed upon] Narrated by Al-Bukhari in his Sahih (3276) and Muslim in his Sahih (134) from the hadith of Abu Hurairah, may God be pleased with him.

It has been observed that the ego is low among some young people, and their religious posts on social networking sites seek to sublimate or regress for a stage of their previous life.

The presence of some severe obsessions in their posts indicates increased anxiety because of more tolerance, which indicates internal conflict and lack of internal peace, the dominance of negative emotion, and the prevalence of profound thoughts on the conscience of young people.

The social network's user relies on religious posts that share the impression that he suffers from loss or distress, and the individual tends to republish these publications on their social networking wall.

The individual tends to use projective language if the negative compulsions are related to his social self-image, and he uses religious texts or hadiths about the Prophet Muhammad, to overcome these psychological compulsions, and to obtain inner tolerance due to psychological and emotional support from the other.

Individuals resort to the use of unbiased behavior, especially in the case of a mood opposite to their emotional state, and when responding or sharing religious posts.

Young people attack their friends via Facebook with religious texts, but in declarative or implicit language to express their rejection of some events that may be imagined in the first place. These illusory events and emotions are formed because of some negative intrusive thoughts that dominate the thought of the user of communication sites.

Thus, the problem of the study stated in the following research question: Is there a correlation between obsessive-compulsive disorder and the religious self-identity of university youth who use social networks?

It is possible to identify the extent of suffering caused by the epidemic in the measurement of some compulsive behavioral acts, and the suffering of young people from some religious obsessions or the association of current events to the continued spread of the epidemic and the growth of religious judgment among young people. Media preaching can be disseminated to modify the behavior of young people, and cognitive-behavioral programs can be created to modify the behavior of university youth.

3.a. There is a correlation between obsessive-compulsive disorder and religious self-identity among university students.

3.b. There are gender differences in the degrees of obsessive-compulsive disorder and religious self-identity among university youth.

The study depends on the cross-sectional studies design, and the descriptive correlative approach to estimate the relationships between religious ego identity and obsessive-compulsive disorder among university students.

The available sample was selected from social networking sites users. The online application was applied to both undergraduate and fresh postgraduate university students. The 314 students were divided by gender into 118 (37.6%) males and 196 (62.4%) females. The sample age ranged between 19 to 35 years, with a mean age of 24.5 years and a standard deviation of 4.40 years.

3.1. Brown-Yale Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS2): The Brown-Yale Obsessive-Compulsive Scoreboard was chosen as the simplest tool for measuring obsessive-compulsive behaviors. The scale has 10 items distributed over two dimensions, the first being the obsessions and its items from 1 to 5, and the second dimension 'compulsive behaviors, and its items from 6 to 10. A five-response scale was chosen, ranging from 0 to 4 in contrast to what the list assumed.

3.2. Religious Self Identity Scale: The study prepared the scale on three dimensions: self-peace (the reassuring self) and includes items from 1 to 7, self-suffering (the blame self) and includes items from 8 to 14, and the third dimension, which is the intention of hostility (The self-commanding evil) and includes items from 15 to 21. The scale in its form consists of 21 items. A five-response Likert scale was chosen, with 1 = never, 5 = always.

The study used the IBM SPSS 21 program to calculate the descriptive statistics indicators for the study, the stability of the scales, and to calculate the relationship between religious ego identity and obsessive-compulsive disorder among university students. The study also used LISREL Software 8.51 to perform the factor analysis of the study scales. Indicators of good fit were chosen to judge the suitability of factor construction to the nature of the sample: RMSEA, GFI, NNFI, X2/df, SRMR, AGFI.

5.1. Descriptive statistics and Reliability:

The study calculated some descriptive statistics indicators such as mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, and stability using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of the religious identity subscales and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The results were the same as in Table 1.

Table 1

descriptive statistics of the study variables subscales
Scales	Factors	Mean	Std. deviation	skewness	kurtosis	Alpha reliability
Religious identity scale (RSS-21)	The Reassuring self	16.72	3.19	-1.15	1.35	.74
	The Blaming self	16.12	3.06	− .77	.88	.66
	The Evil-commanding Self	16.96	3.09	/.92	.76	.73
Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive (Y-BOCS-II)	Obsession	9.93	2.65	− .001	.65	.74
Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive (Y-BOCS-II)	Compulsion	10.41	2.78	− .40	.60	.76

The number of items for the religious identity subscales was equal in each dimension. The average value of the self-commanding evil subscale is high, followed by the reassuring self, then the blamed self. This result means that negative thoughts may cause the individual to continue to think about disturbances that may prompt the individual to take proactive reactions. However, it was noticed from the results that the reassuring self takes the form of a negative twist, meaning that many university students are characterized by self-tolerance and inner peace. And that the motive to do negative behaviors may be caused by psychological prevention and psychological emptying of the individual, this explains the high average degrees of compulsive behaviors.

5.2. The construction validity of the religious identity scale:

Confirmatory factor analysis using the unweighted least squares method was used to verify the three-factor model. The goodness-of-fit indicators were as presented in Table 2.

Table 2

The goodness-of-fit of Religious identity Scale.
Index	RMSEA	X²/df	SRMR	GFI	NNFI	AGFI
value	.021	3	.015	.90	.90	.80

The results showed the best fit according to model goodness of fit, which means that the religious identity model applies to the sample data. Table 3 presents the item factor loadings on the factors as follows:

Table 3

The item factor loadings of religious identity model on latent factors.
Factors	Items	Factor loadings	Std. error	t-value
reassuring self	1. I find comfort in praying regularly.	.61	.028	21.93
	2. I feel psychological comfort when performing what is required of me	.78	.028	28.08
	3. I feel strong and religiously committed.	.78	.028	28.16
	4. I feel inner peace and harmony.	.26	.026	9.90
	5. The religious atmosphere makes me feel calm.	.38	.026	15.02
	6. I initiate good deeds that bring blessing to all.	.57	.026	21.84
	7. I monitor myself in all my actions to achieve discipline	.64	.027	23.43
The Blaming self	8. I feel remorse if I let go of an endeavor, I did not do	.46	.025	18.57
	9. I feel intimidated if I am too busy helping others	.42	.026	16.63
	10. I feel embarrassed if I do not participate in religious events	.53	.026	20.58
	11. I feel sleepless at night if I cause harm to others	.66	.027	24.55
	12. I pass the words before speaking to them besides others for fear of embarrassing them	.59	.026	22.72
	13. It bothers me to interact nervously with others	.23	.025	9.32
	14. I feel blamed if I don't do better while working	.63	.027	23.20
The Evil- Commanding Self	15. I find comfort in taking revenge on those who have done me wrong	.33	.025	13.34
	16. I feel powerful if I unjustly impose my control on others	.66	.027	24.95
	17. I lie to justify my mistakes to preserve my appearance	.68	.027	25.19
	18. I take advantage of my relationships with others for personal benefits	.35	.025	14.03
	19. Embarrass others if they begin the streets	.65	.026	25.16
	20. Refuse to give anything to others for free	.67	.026	26.11
	21. Controlling others makes me feel strong among people	.57	.026	21.79

The self-reassuring factor loadings ranged from 0.26 to 0.73. While the blaming self-subscale was ranged from 0.23 to 0.66. The evil commanding self item factor loadings ranged from 0.33 to 0.68. The Lisrel software showed a correlation matrix between the three factors as shown in Table 4.

Table 4

The lisrel output correlation matrix of latent factors.
Factors	reassuring self	Blame self	The self-commanding evil
The Reassuring Self	1
The Blaming Self	.91 (.04) 24.42	1
The Evil-Commanding Self	.80 (.03) 26.16	.92 (.04) 24.15	1

It was noted that all correlation coefficients are high and statistically significant, which means that the three factors can organize into a second-order general factor.

5.3. The structural validity of the obsessive-compulsive scale:

The confirmatory factor analysis was performed using the unweighted least-squares method for verifying the two-factor model. The goodness-of-fit indicators were the same as in Table 5.

Table 5

The goodness-of-fit of Obsessive-Compulsive Scale.
Index	RMSEA	X²/df	SRMR	GFI	NNFI	AGFI
value	.023	1.5	.015	.93	.83	.88

The two-factor model of the obsessive-compulsive phenomenon has accepted fit which reflected the sample data. But for the NNFI index and X2/ df are poorly matched and this may be due to the imbalance of the gradient moderation condition. The factor loadings were as in Table 6.

Table 6

The item factor loadings of Obsessive-Compulsive model on latent factors.
Items	Factor loadings	Std. error	t-value
Obsession’s subscale 1. Time spent.	.53	.041	12.88
2. Interference	.51	.042	11.96
3. Distress	.59	.044	13.31
4. Resistance	.63	.043	14.60
5. Control	.74	.047	15.80
Compulsion’s subscale 6. Time spent	.34	.036	9.51
7. Interference	.86	.046	18.78
8. Distress	.64	.040	16.11
9. Resistance	.71	.042	17.08
10. Control	.56	.039	14.30

The obsessions subscale factor loadings ranged from 0.51 to 0.74 while the compulsive behaviors subscale loadings ranged from 0.34 to 0.86. It was noted that the values of saturation after compulsive behaviors were higher than in the obsessive dimension, and this means that the individual's sense of self-blame is constantly behind his compulsive actions. These compulsive actions do not mean an individual's feeling of guilt, but maybe behind the individual's pursuit of perfection in his details, or because of his feeling of shortcoming in religious aspects.

5.4. Relationships between obsessive-compulsive disorder and the religious identity of youth:

Pearson's correlation matrix estimated the range between the obsessive-compulsive disorder (obsessions, compulsive behaviors), and religious identity using IBM SPSS. The results were as shown in Table 7.

Table 7

The correlation matrix of obsessive- compulsive Subscale.
Factors	reassuring self	Blame self	The self-commanding evil	Obsessions	Compulsions
The Reassuring Self	1
The Blaming Self	.73**	1
The Evil- commanding Self	.63**	.73**	1
Obsessions	.36**	.43**	.57**	1
Compulsions	− .39**	− .46**	− .44**	− .39**	1

The study found a positive relationship between reassuring self and blame self, this result means that self-awareness makes the individual observe his actions, and this makes the individual feel extra reassured. The blame self-factor is also related to one of the Big Five factors of personality, which is conscientiousness. A factor expresses psychological comfort, social adjustment, religious self-satisfaction, perfectionism aspiring rejection of obsessions and internal conflicts, and thus self-blame is a means to improve life satisfaction and reach inner peace for the individual. Thus, self-blame is an indicator of mental health and quality of religious life, but in the absence of obsessions.

There is a positive correlation between the reassuring self and the obsessive one, meaning that the person's religious negligence concerns are behind the discipline and a sense of religious responsibility, and they are a motivation for the individual to reach inner peace and life satisfaction. The profound thoughts result from the unconsciousness of the individual due to the originality of the context. On the other hand, the correlation between the obsession and the reassuring self is weak, and this indicates a high religious commitment, and therefore the relationship between the reassuring self and the obsession is weak, as the mind takes matters by analogy to distinguish good ideas from others.

The results found a negative correlation between the reassuring self and compulsive behaviors, meaning that the increase in compulsive disordered behaviors indicates a lack of safety, and the feeling of sadness and distress is the result of religious non-compliance, and therefore the individual is wasteful in uncontrollable actions, and thus the regulation of emotion is weak, and therefore His interactions are maladaptive to the social environment in which he lives.

5.5. Extra analytics:

There were differences in religious self-identity factors across gender according to an independent t-test. The results showed that there are differences between the sexes in the reassuring self (T = 2.47, P = .015). The results confirmed the superiority of females (M = 17.07 over males (M = 16.16)) in the reassuring self, and this result seems logical as females are more committed in their actions, and this may be due to several factors either religious or moral maturity or social approval for not appearing negligence in front of others.

The results of the gender differences in the blameworthy self (T = .79, P = .432) proved that this means higher moral maturity, religious commitment, psychological vigilance, higher vigilance of conscience, purity of ego, and higher levels of normal social adjustment with others. The results also demonstrated that there are no gender differences in the self-commanding evil (T = .48, P = .699), which means a higher ability to emotional assessment, severe self-criticism, the ability to self-control, controlling levels of interaction with others, and rejecting ways of social hostility.

The independent t-test results proved that there are no gender differences in the obsession factor (T = .66, P = .512), which means that obsessions grow in the individual regardless of his gender in the case of severe self-evaluation and criticism, to modify levels of interaction, and to correct self-image Religiously aware of the behaviors of the self. The results concluded that there are no gender differences in some compulsive behaviors (T = .39, P = .699). This means that compulsive behaviors are either an attempt to correct the perceived religious self-image, or compulsive behaviors are defensive mechanisms that the individual resorts to adaptability to social contexts, especially in the case of rejection of the other treatments.

The study used the MANCOVA technique, considering the age variable as a covariate and gender as an independent variable. There were no differences across age scales in the religious self-identity factors, obsessions, and compulsive behaviors (F = 1.75, P = .124), while gender was a non-significant variable in the factors of the study tools (F = 1.54, P = .177) as result confirmed. The results of the independent t-test in the blame self, self-commanding evil, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. While it opposes the results of the reassuring self, which means that the differences between males and females may arise from the wise effect of age because of the prohibition and God’s control in actions and the growth of religious maturity of the old samples more than in the young.

The study found positive correlations between the religious self-identity subscales and the obsession. While the study found negative relationships between the religious self-identity subscales and compulsive behaviors. Positive obsessions in the sense of feeling blame self because of not satisfying the suitable actions, seeking for self-correction, and vigilance of conscience are a way to obtain inner peace, reduce mistakes, and prevent evil acts during interactions with others, and this is consistent with social and moral references and the stressful context nature (Palmer, 2020; Vatansever & Ozgur-Ilhan, 2021).

The reason for the negative relationship between compulsive acts and the reassuring self may be the false compulsive behaviors that the individual uses to suppress unfavorable emotion and the pursuit of idealism, correct religious self-image, and improve images of social adjustment in contexts fraught with tension and conflict, and this agrees with (Buonanno et al., 2021; Wilt et al., 2017).

Positive obsessiveness may appear in the form of emotional self-evaluation, severe criticism of self-acts in social contexts, and sublimation may be a defensive mechanism to control the ability to adapt, and therefore it is an indicator of self-blame, and this is consistent with the results of (Costa Jr et al., 2021).

The compulsive actions may be the result of low self-blame, which is a logical consequence of anhedonia, pathological anxiety, and misbehavior. Here, the dominance of the self that commands bad appears in the individual, which pushes him to do abusive actions to restore ego balance, and this may agree with studies (Abramovitch et al., 2014; Breuninger et al., 2019).

The results revealed that there are gender differences in the factor of reassuring psychology in favor of females according to the independent t-test, but it was proved that there were no differences between males and females in the case of MANCOVA. This indicates that females are more than males in the older age stages in pursuit of idealism, psychological calm, normal adaptation to social contexts, moral follow-up, and religious maturity.

Funding: This work was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, through the Research Groups Program Grant no. (RGP-1440-0020).
Ethical Approval: All procedures performed in the study were following the ethical standards of the institutional research committee of Faculty of Arts Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (IRB Log Number: 20-0473) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.
Data Availability Statement: The raw data supporting the conclusion of this article will be available upon request to the corresponding author.
Compliance with Ethical Standards: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Factor 1: reassuring self

I find comfort in praying regularly.
I feel psychological comfort when performing what is required of me.
I feel strong and religiously committed.
I feel inner peace and harmony.
The religious atmosphere makes me feel calm.
I initiate good deeds that bring blessing to all.
I monitor myself in all my actions to achieve discipline

Factor 2: Blame self

I feel remorse if I let go of an endeavor I did not do.
I feel intimidated if I am too busy helping others.
I feel embarrassed if I do not participate in religious events.
I feel sleepless at night if I cause harm to others.
I pass the words before speaking to them besides others for fear of embarrassing them.
It bothers me to interact nervously with others.
I feel blamed if I don't do better while working.

Factor 3: The self-commanding evil:

I find comfort in taking revenge on those who have done me wrong.
I feel powerful if I unjustly impose my control on others.
I lie to justify my mistakes to preserve my appearance.
I take advantage of my relationships with others for personal benefits
Embarrass others if they begin the streets.
Refuse to give anything to others for free

Controlling others makes me feel strong among people.

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Religious Identity and Its Relationship to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder among University Youth

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Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Literature Review

3. Statement Of The Problem And Motivation Of Research

4. Importance Of The Study

5. Hypotheses

6. Method

7. Participants

8. Materials

9. Procedures And Data Analysis

10. Results And Discussion:

5.1. Descriptive statistics and Reliability:

5.2. The construction validity of the religious identity scale:

5.3. The structural validity of the obsessive-compulsive scale:

5.4. Relationships between obsessive-compulsive disorder and the religious identity of youth:

5.5. Extra analytics:

11. Discussion

Declarations

References

Appendix: Religious Identity

Factor 1: reassuring self

Factor 2: Blame self

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