Jumping to conclusions and delusions: The impact of discussion of the bias on the bias

The present study was an investigation of the impact a brief intervention designed to raise awareness of a cognitive bias known to be robust for individuals with delusions has on the reasoning strategies of individuals with delusions. Individuals with delusions (n = 57) were randomly assigned either to receive or not to receive a discussion of the jumping to conclusions bias and its pitfalls. Participants' performance on 3 reasoning trials - 1 emotionally neutral (beads) and 2 emotionally salient (self-referred survey words) - was then assessed; the number of stimuli participants requested before making a decision was evaluated to determine if the Jumping to Conclusions Discussion resulted in increased data gathering. There was no difference between groups (those who received and those who did not receive the Jumping to Conclusions Discussion) in terms of how many beads they gathered (p = .36), but there were significant differences on both reasoning trials of emotionally salient stimuli (p's < .05), such that participants who received the Jumping to Conclusions Discussion requested more stimuli on those tasks than individuals who did not receive the discussion. Thus, results suggest that discussion of the jumping to conclusions bias may impact the bias directly, at least for material that is emotional in nature. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to cognitive behavioral therapies for psychosis and existing research on reasoning and delusions.