Publications
Publication details [#1418]
Gangemi, Amelia, Francesco Mancini and P.N. Johnson-Laird. 2013. Models and cognitive change in psychopathology. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 25 (2) : 157–164. 8 pp. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Abstract
The article discusses the results of two experiments in which participants drew their own conclusions from syllogistic premises testing the prediction based on hyper-emotion theory, which suggests that attributes psychological illnesses to emotions of aberrant intensity.
The first experiment compared patients with depression with controls, while in the second one students scoring high on anxiety were compared with controls. Controls tended to draw believable conclusions, and this belief bias was greater for invalid inferences. By contrast, the clinical groups were better reasoners than the controls, and did not show belief bias.
However, contrary to the initial hypothesis, participants in the clinical group refrained from drawing invalid conclusions about neutral topics more than controls refrained from drawing invalid unbelievable conclusions.