The Jumping-to-Conclusions Bias in New Religious Movements

Abstract

The jumping-to-conclusions bias has not been examined in a new religious movement (NRM) group. Twenty-seven delusion-prone NRM individuals were compared with 25 individuals with psychotic disorders and 63 non-delusion-prone individuals on four probabilistic inference tasks, together with measures of psychotic symptoms and delusion proneness. The NRM individuals requested significantly less evidence when compared with the control individuals on both meaningful and nonmeaningful tasks. The NRM individuals requested significantly more evidence on a difficult meaningful task when compared with the individuals with psychotic disorders. A specific reasoning style but not a general reasoning style differentiates the NRM individuals from the individuals with psychotic disorders. These findings may be specific to NRM individuals and may not be generalized to other delusion-prone groups.

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

“…On the other hand, mean number of beliefs endorsed by our patients (7.11) appeared to be smaller than that reported by previous studies (e.g. 11.8 in Peters et al [ 55 ], 8.76 in Lim et al [ 52 ]). The mean PDI total score in our patients (69.38) was also smaller than in previous studies (e.g.…”

“…The mean PDI total score in our patients (69.38) was also smaller than in previous studies (e.g. 128.14 in Kao et al [ 51 ]; 91.04 in Lim et al [ 52 ]). It is possible that our patients, who had first-episode psychosis, had lower delusional ideation than patients in other studies.…”

Appraisals of psychotic experiences: an experimental investigation of symptomatic, remitted and non-need-for-care individuals

“…There is limited evidence, for example, that exposure to trauma is equivalent between those with and without a need-for-care, but that the specific types and impact of trauma differ significantly (Lovatt et al 2010 ). Similarly, a recent study showed that the jumping-to-conclusions bias, which potentially underlies threat appraisal, is less pronounced in those without a need-for-care (Lim et al 2012 ). Future studies should attempt to test whether the relationship between PEs and threatening appraisals is mediated by trauma, IQ, socio-economic status and other environmental factors, to determine which may have a protective effect v .…”

A Bayesian perspective on delusions: Suggestions for modifying two reasoning tasks

“…Indeed, delusion-prone subjects do not show a similarly strong bias to draw premature conclusions (data gathering bias) than do patients with delusions (McLean et al, 2016, Ross et al, 2015. And believers in the "New religious movement" show a similarly strong bias (Lim et al, 2012). Thus, the Bayesian decision theory is a promising tool but it needs to be extended to incorporate a distress factor.…”