“Thinking Style and Psychosis Proneness Do Not Predict False Insights”, Hilary J. Grimmer, Ruben E. Laukkonen, Anna Freydenzon, William von Hippel, Jason M. Tangen2022-09 (illusion-of-depth bias)⁠:

The FIAT paradigm (Grimmer et al 2021) is a novel method of eliciting ‘Aha’ moments for incorrect solutions to anagrams in the laboratory, i.e. false insights.

There exist many documented reports of psychotic symptoms accompanying strong feelings of ‘Aha!’ (Feyaerts et al 2021; Mishara2010; Tulver et al 2021), suggesting that the newly developed FIAT could reveal whether people who have more false insights are more prone to psychosis and delusional belief.

To test this possibility, we recruited 200 participants to take an adapted version of the FIAT and complete measures of thinking style and psychosis proneness.

We found no association between experimentally induced false insights and measures of Schizotypy, Need for Cognition, Jumping to Conclusions, Aberrant Salience, Faith in Intuition, or the Cognitive Reflection Task.

We conclude that experiencing false insights might not be constrained to any particular type of person, but rather, may arise for anyone under the right circumstances.

[Keywords: insight, aha, delusion, phenomenology]

See Also:

• The Insights Psychedelics Give You Aren’t Always True: The study of false—sober—insights teaches us to be wary of accepting every realization from psychedelic trips without critical thinking

• The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

• Irrelevant insights make worldviews ring true

• Getting a grip on insight: real-time and embodied Aha experiences predict correct solutions

• What causes the insight memory advantage?

• Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight

• Intuitive Feelings of Warmth and Confidence in Insight and Non-insight Problem Solving of Magic Tricks

• Discovery misattribution: When solving is confused with remembering

• Believers in pseudoscience present lower evidential criteria