Excessive teleological thinking is driven by aberrant associations and not by failure of reasoning.

ABSTRACT: Teleological thought - the tendency to ascribe purpose to objects and events - is useful in some cases (encouraging explanation-seeking), but harmful in others (fueling delusions and conspiracy theories). What drives excessive and maladaptive teleological thinking? In causal learning, there is a fundamental distinction between associative learning versus learning via propositional mechanisms. Here, we propose that directly contrasting the contributions of these two pathways can elucidate the roots of excess teleology. We modified a causal learning task such that we could encourage associative versus propositional mechanisms in different instances. Across three experiments (total N = 600), teleological tendencies were correlated with delusion-like ideas and uniquely explained by aberrant

SUBMITTER: Ongchoco JDK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10495659 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature