More than 80% of people with OCD never receive ERP, the gold-standard psychotherapy for OCD treatment. Digital, smart-phone based interventions offer a promising solution to address this treatment gap. However, existing apps are often limited by being too time-consuming, requiring therapist assistance, and having lower success rates compared to in-person therapy. One possible solution is integrating positive psychology interventions (PPIs), which are designed to cultivate positive emotions and engagement with one’s environment, build meaningful relationships, and create meaning in one’s circumstances. PPIs are effective in improving attention and motivation, and encourage people to seek out positive experiences, which decreases contrast avoidance (maintaining a negative mood to avoid sudden sharp increases in negative emotion).

This study will compare the efficacy of “Optimizing Positive Emotions in ERP” (OPEN-ERP), a smartphone-based intervention that combines ERP with PPIs, to ERP alone over 14 days. Participants will also answer questionnaires on their phones throughout the day and at the end of treatment, which can provide insight into whether OPEN-ERP reduces OCD symptoms more effectively than ERP alone, whether it keeps people more engaged, and whether it is experienced as more tolerable. The study will also test whether OPEN-ERP can reduce contrast avoidance, and explore which participants (e.g., based on demographics) benefit most. If it is effective, OPEN-ERP would demonstrate the utility of PPI use in ERP, and could be made widely available as a low-cost, therapist-free tool.