‘Jumping to Conclusions’ and Attributional Style in Persecutory Delusions

Abstract

Persecutory delusions have been associated with a tendency to 'jump to conclusions' and an abnormal attributional style. We hypothesised that jumping to conclusions -requesting relatively little information prior to decision-making -could account for the observed biases in attributional style. Individuals with persecutory delusions (n = 24) were compared with matched depressed psychiatric (n = 24) and nonpsychiatric (n = 24) comparison groups using a modified inductive reasoning task (John & Dodgson, 1994) on which participants requested information before making attributions for common social events. Both clinical groups 'jumped to conclusions' and made attributions on the basis of little evidence. This tendency was greatest in individuals with persecutory delusions. Differences were also found in the proportions of questions seeking internal, external and situational information. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in the final attributions made. These findings inform a model of persecutory delusions whereby a limited cognitive search strategy may influence attributional style.

Different sides of the same coin? Intercorrelations of cognitive biases in schizophrenia

“…School education and executive functioning which are also related to intelligence were, however, uncorrelated with any JTC variables in our study. We agree with Merrin et al (2007) that intelligence may independently contribute to JTC but is unlikely to fully explain hasty decision making in schizophrenia patients.…”

“…Alternatively, some attributional biases, such as a tendency towards monocausal inferences (i.e., attributing an event to a single cause), could stem from jumping to conclusions. The failure to contemplate the entire available evidence may prompt personalised attributions about events (see predictions made by Merrin, Kinderman, & Bentall, 2007).…”

“…We adopted a factor analytic approach instead of using simple correlations to elucidate latent underlying constructs. Beyond the reasoning biases, this analysis also incorporated a rating scale for self-esteem, on which patients with schizophrenia frequently display lower scores than healthy controls (Lincoln, Mehl, et al, in press;Moritz et al, in press;Moritz, Werner, & von Collani, 2006), and a questionnaire on need for closure which can be regarded as possible motivational factors of reasoning biases and attributional style (Merrin et al, 2007).…”

The Jumping-to-Conclusions Bias in New Religious Movements

“…IQ may confound the interpretation of the results from the JTC tasks (Garety et al, 1991;Merrin et al, 2007). The WASI was administered to examine current IQ differences between the groups.…”

Rationale and protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis on reduced data gathering in people with delusions

“…According to this criterion, around 40 to 70% of people with delusions seem to demonstrate JTC, compared to around 10 to 20% of clinical and non-clinical participants [6]. Similar biases have been shown on other tasks that also involve the gathering of information required for a decision [7,8]. …”