Healthy people with delusional ideation change their mind with conviction

Abstract

Emotional distress and reasoning biases are two factors known to contribute to delusions. As a step towards elucidating mechanisms underlying delusions, the main aim of this study was to evaluate a possible "jumping to new conclusions" reasoning bias in healthy people with delusional ideation and its association with emotions. We surveyed 80 healthy participants, measuring levels of depression, anxiety, cognitive error and delusional ideation. Participants completed two versions of the beads task to evaluate their reasoning style. Results showed that people with delusional ideation reached a conclusion after less information, as expected. Interestingly, they also tended to change their conclusions more often than people without delusional ideation and did so with greater conviction. Depression and cognitive errors were strong predictors of delusional ideation but not of reasoning style. We conclude that delusional ideation in non-psychotic individuals is independently predicted by depressive symptoms and by a high conviction in new conclusions.

Jumping to Conclusions Style along the Continuum of Delusions: Delusion-Prone Individuals Are Not Hastier in Decision Making than Healthy Individuals

“…For example, non-clinical studies that reported more JTC in delusion-prone than non-delusion-prone individuals tended to adopt a percentile split, yielding two non-clinical groups more widely apart on delusion-proneness than studies using a median split [ 19 , 21 ]. However, studies that investigated the link between JTC and delusion-proneness based on median split grouping or correlation approaches did not provide consistent results [ 20 , 22 , 23 , 25 , 28 , 46 ].…”

“…[ 47 – 48 ]). Similarly, clinical and non-clinical studies using multi-dimensional measures found inconsistent results regarding the association between JTC and dimensions of delusions [ 22 , 23 , 49 ]. We did not find a closer link between JTC and delusional ideation in the clinical group as compared with healthy controls.…”

“…Rather, delusion-prone individuals in this study endorsed a greater number of delusion-like beliefs and had a higher PDI total score than patients. Previous studies using the PDI have reported number of beliefs endorsed in non-clinical individuals ranging from 5.40 to 11.32 [ 23 , 51 – 54 ]. Mean number of PDI beliefs endorsed in the present study (7.54) posits our non-clinical sample within the wide range of previous studies.…”

Hétköznapi gyanakvás: életünk a paranoia

“…Mindez speciálisan kifejlesz tett tesztekkel igazolható, ahol bizonyos számú golyó húzás után kell eldönteni, hogy az melyik konténerből származik (beads task) [9]. A közelmúlt metaelemzése (n = 2237) adatokat szolgáltat arra, hogy a fenti tesztben a döntés előtt kért gyöngyök (golyók) száma (adatgyűj tés) és a skálával megítélt téveszmés gondolkodás mérté ke közötti összefüggés negatív korrelációt jelez, azaz a súlyosabb állapot kevesebb adatgyűjtést feltételez a dön téshozatalhoz [10].…”

“…Ez már nyilván extrém pszichotikus mélységű torzulása a gondolkodásnak, ahol az önértéke lészavar bűnösségi téveszméig fokozódott. Tanulmá nyok szerint a depresszió és kognitív torzítás előre jelez ték a paranoid gondolkodást, de nem az okfejtési/ érvelési stílust [9]. Az is megfogalmazható, hogy az 'ál landó aggódás, aggodalmaskodás paranoiához vezethet'.…”