Phenomenology and Social Agent Representation in Psychosis: A Welcome Integration
Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science June 20, 2017 Vaughan Bell, K. Mills, G. Modinos et al.
A debate about how to study psychosis in cognitive science is addressed. The authors agree with critics that the subjective experience of psychosis, especially the presence of illusory social agents, cannot be reduced to simple cognitive errors. They argue that current social-cognition models neglect this central phenomenological feature. They propose that research should also examine how social agents are represented and deployed, not just how social information is processed. They suggest that intersubjective instability in psychosis may be reorganized into illusory social agents as a best-fit explanation, a hypothesis for future study. They advocate for a phenomenologically informed cognitive science to better understand psychosis.