According to recent studies published in Communication Psychology, individuals with paranoia and excessive farsightedness, which are distorted beliefs about intent, may be associated with specific errors in visual perception.
Despite being unsure about how to respond, people attribute intent to others. This pattern can also be seen in simple shapes of individuals, such as the Heider-Simmel animation that demonstrates how individuals can infer their intentions through the exploration of small and complex shapes.
Research has previously shown that humans tend to rapidly detect agency and intent, and this ability to quickly perceive intent can lead to mental health problems such as paranoia as the ability to quickly detect agency and intent becomes distorted. Similarly, excessive farsightedness is thought to be a response to a belief that there is no purpose, as it has been shown to be associated with various cognitive biases and belief systems, such as conspiratorial thinking.
The scientists investigated the possibility of linking high-level cognitive distortions to fundamental perceptual processes. They investigated whether individuals with paranoia and highly farsighted thinking were more prone to misreading visual cues related to agency and intention, resulting in what they referred to as “social hallucinations.”
The Wu Tsai Institute’s laboratory is investigating the phenomenon of psychosis, marked by delusions and hallucinations, and its mild manifestations in the general population. Understanding the processes that lead individuals to make false assumptions about neighbor behavior, such as being perceived as a spy, and the reasons behind these findings are examined.
By classifying these symptoms by category, cognitive or perceptual approaches can influence our understanding of the symptoms of psychosis and the functioning of mental processes. The researchers conducted four studies with 623 participants in an experimental paradigm where participants were required to view a moving disc display and assess whether one disc was chasing another disc.
This allowed them to measure perceptual errors related to chasing behavior. During the initial two trials, participants only considered whether chasing was taking place.
The researchers created ambiguous situations by modifying the disc movement patterns, where no real pursuit was present. False alarms were used as a marker of social hallucinations, when participants incorrectly believed someone was chasing them, while no pursuit was taking place.
During the third and fourth studies, participants had to identify the disc types corresponding to “wolves” and “sheep.” To determine the relationship between paranoia and visionary thinking and the specific impairment in role attribution, the researchers examined participants’ confidence in decision making, which provided information on the extent to which they believed in their false beliefs.
They assessed paranoia, visionary thinking, and self-reported hallucinations by completing a behavioral task as well as questionnaires, which helped to study how perceptual errors were connected to broader mental processes.
The study revealed a variety of perceptual typologies that are associated with paranoia and visionary thinking. Individuals with high paranoia were more prone to misinterpret pursuit when no threat was present. This implies that paranoia may be characterized by highly subjective visual processing theory about potential threats. Furthermore, these participants were not able to accurately perceive the “sheep” in the pursuit displays, suggesting that this was due to their difficulty recognizing non-threatening agents.
In contrast, individuals with advanced teleological reasoning may experience difficulty identifying the “wolf”, the object of their pursuit.
Both paranoia and teleological thinking were associated with high-confidence errors, and participants who demonstrated cognitive tendencies that correctly judged the objects in front of them (see section below) were more likely to be fully aware of their incorrect judgments, and these errors were associated with hallucinations (including hallucinations), reported the results, which support the idea that the misattribution of agency to the psyche may be further related to high tendencies toward perceptual distortions.
People who hold unusual beliefs about other people and events may actually see the world differently, as Corlett explained in an interview with PsyPost. They experience intentional actions and express those same experiences with confidence, which is why they are called social hallucinations.
The results reinforce the argument that paranoia and over-the-counter teleological thinking are influenced by particular perceptual biases, but the study has some limitations.