Paranoid and teleological thinking give rise to distinct social hallucinations in vision
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Paranoia (believing others intend harm) and excess teleological thinking (ascribing too much purpose) are non-consensual beliefs about agents. Human vision rapidly detects agents and their intentions. Might paranoia and teleology have roots in visual perception? Using displays that evoke the impression that one disc (‘wolf’) is chasing another (‘sheep’), we find that paranoia and teleology involve perceiving chasing when there is none (studies 1 and 2) — errors we characterize as social hallucinations. When asked to identify the wolf or the sheep (studies 3, 4a, and 4b), we find high-paranoia participants struggled to identify sheep, while high-teleology participants were impaired at identifying wolves — both despite high-confidence. Both types of errors correlated with hallucinatory percepts in the real world. Although paranoia and teleology both involve excess perception of agency, the current results collectively suggest a perceptual distinction between the two, perhaps with clinical import. When asked to judge if a chase was present in a visual display of moving discs, people with higher paranoia and teleological thinking were more likely to perceive a chase in its absence. They were also worse at detecting the chaser and the chased, yet highly confident when there was no chase.
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Some individuals exhibit a deficit in inferring others' intentions or understanding implicit mental states, while others show the opposite pattern, characterized by hypermentalization.
“Some individuals exhibit a deficit in inferring others’ intentions or understanding implicit mental states, while others show the opposite pattern, characterized by hypermentalization (an excessive or inaccurate attribution of meaning and agency) [42].”
From Delusional Experiences Emerging From AI Chatbot Interactions or “AI Psychosis” (2025) · cites this paper as [42]
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- Authors
- Castiello, S., Ongchoco, J. D. K., van Buren, B., Scholl, B. J., & Corlett, P. R.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Corlett, Philip R.
- Venue
- Communications Psychology
- Published
- 2024-12-17
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 117-117
- ISSN
- 2731-9121 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11652377
- OpenAlex
- W4405459528
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 55
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3
- FWCI
- 1.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Communications Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- John Templeton Foundation
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Hallucinations in medical conditions
- Keywords
- paranoia, teleological thinking, intention perception, agent detection, perceptual confidence
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