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Introduction
The over importance of thought is one of the key cognitions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) (OCCWG, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005) and is the belief that the mere presence of a thought indicates it is important (OCCWG, 1997). It encompasses thought-action fusion (TAF), superstitious and magical thinking (Freeston, Rheaume and Ladouceur, 1996). Shafran, Thordarson and Rachman (1996) propose two forms of TAF. These are TAF likelihood, which refers to belief that having an intrusive thought increases the probability of the event occurring, and TAF moral, which is belief that having the intrusive thought is the moral equivalent of carrying out the thought. Magical thinking may underlie the more specific distortion of TAF and superstitious thinking seen in OCD (Einstein and Menzies, 2004a, b, 2006). It has been suggested that TAF is a specific form of magical thinking (Amir, Freshman, Ramsey, Neary and Brigidi, 2001). We argue there are problems with existing measures of magical thinking and the aim of the study was to develop a valid measure of it.
Eckblad and Chapman's (1983) 30-item Magical Ideation Scale (MIS) is the most widely used measure of magical thinking, which they define as "belief in forms of causation that are inconsistent with conventional standards" (p. 215). Magical thinking encompasses a wide range of paranormal phenomena, superstitions and even religious beliefs (Tobacyk and Milford, 1983; Zusne and Jones, 1989). Items on the MIS cover superstitions, TAF and a range of magical phenomena, such as beliefs in reincarnation and telepathy. Whilst some items, e.g. "Some people can make me aware of them just by thinking about me", measure general magical thinking, a problem with the MIS is that it also contains a number of items describing psychotic symptoms, e.g. "I have felt that there were messages for me in the way things were arranged, like in a store window". An assumption underlying the MIS is that magical ideation is prominent in schizophrenia-prone persons (Chapman, Chapman and Miller, 1982; Eckblad and Chapman, 1983) and some items assess ideas of reference. We argue that the inclusion of items that assess psychotic symptoms in the MIS is a problem because these symptoms are not relevant to understanding the link between magical thinking and OCD, and that...