Health psychology/Cognitive biases · Persecutory cognition

Jumping to conclusions

What it means

A data-gathering bias of reaching a firm conclusion on minimal evidence; strongly associated with the FORMATION of delusions ("beads task").

Worked example

On the probabilistic-reasoning beads task, a patient names the jar with confidence after only one or two beads.

In the exam

A patient forms a fixed, confident belief about a situation after a single ambiguous piece of information, seeking no further evidence before being certain.

What settles it

Jumping to conclusions forms a belief on too LITTLE evidence (delusion formation). Bias against disconfirmatory evidence is the failure to REVISE the belief once contradicting evidence arrives (delusion maintenance).

Classically confused with

Bias against disconfirmatory evidence

Source: Garety & Freeman; Bentall