Disgust, Contagion Beliefs, and Contamination-Related Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms in Hospital and Non-Hospital Workers

Recent work highlights the role of disgust in the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), particularly contamination-related OCD (C-OCD). Beyond elevated trait disgust, individuals with C-OCD often endorse strong beliefs about how contamination spreads through contact — so-called contagion beliefs. Hospitals represent an environment where contaminants are part of daily life, requiring hospital workers (HW) to manage both, real infection risks and their own disgust responses. Disgust, contagion beliefs, OCD symptomatology, and situation-specific contamination concerns were assessed across several populations to examine whether working in a hospital might provide a resilience factor relevant for C-OCD treatment. Medically trained HW were expected to show the lowest levels of disgust and contagion beliefs, followed by medical students, non-medical HW, and psychology students. This hypothesis was partially supported only for trait disgust; in contrast, HW (with and without medical background) showed the highest levels of contagion beliefs. Exploratory analyses revealed that, although contagion beliefs were high within the HW group, contamination concerns were significantly lower compared to psychology students. Additionally, within the medical HW group, contagion beliefs were not correlated with C-OCD symptoms, a relationship that was present in all other groups. These findings suggest that contagion beliefs may not function as a risk factor for C-OCD in contexts where individuals regularly manage real contamination threats. Future research should clarify which factors buffer HW from the typically maladaptive link between contagion beliefs and C-OCD symptoms.