Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a common, chronically relapsing disorder of the gastro intestinal tract. It represents a significant burden for the health care system and for sufferers, in terms of reduced quality of life. A range of psychological factors have been implicated in irritable bowel syndrome. The present study considered several of these factors : learning history (childhood abuse), cognitive factors (attributions and health beliefs) and affect (depression and anxiety) and attempted to predict symptom severity in a group of patients diagnosed with IBS. Several significant correlations were found; IBS symptom severity was positively correlated with a tendency to make illness/ disease attributions for common somatic sensations, was positively correlated with emotional distress and was positively correlated with abuse in childhood. A regression analysis was used to identify the best predictive model of symptom severity, however, the amount of variance explained by the models was low, suggesting that other, unmeasured factors play a greater role in the prediction of IBS symptoms. Suggestions and improvements for future studies are discussed.