Relationships between fear of COVID-19, cyberchondria, intolerance of uncertainty, and obsessional probabilistic inferences: A structural equation model

Abstract

The study was set out to explore the structural relationships between fear of COVID-19, cyberchondria, intolerance of uncertainty, and obsessional probabilistic inferences. The data were recruited online from a community population (n = 1,049) subjected to a confirmatory factor analytic procedure. The structural model specified according to the previous findings in the literature showed that a general tendency to negative expectations in terms of probabilistic thinking was significantly associated with both COVID-19-related-fear and intolerance of uncertainty. Fear of COVID-19 was significantly associated with cyberchondria. Probabilistic thinking style and intolerance of uncertainty contributed to cyberchondria through fear of COVID-19 as well. We concluded that a tendency to engage in a probabilistic thinking style and intolerance of uncertainty seems to play role in the etiology of fear of infection and cyberchondria.