Knowra Delusion Delusion A firmly held belief that persists despite strong contrary evidence and is not explained by shared cultural norms. It can occur in psychiatric disorders and in other medical conditions.
Belief : A mental attitude that treats a proposition as true or likely true. Delusions are beliefs whose persistence and resistance to evidence set them apart.
Jumping to conclusions bias : A reasoning tendency to reach decisions using unusually little information. This bias has been associated with some delusions, especially persecutory beliefs.
Mental status examination : A structured clinical assessment of appearance, behavior, mood, thought, perception, cognition, and insight. Clinicians assess belief content, conviction, and openness to alternatives in this examination.
Hallucination : A perception-like experience occurring without a corresponding external stimulus. Hallucinations are perceptual experiences, whereas delusions are beliefs.
Cultural relativism : The view that beliefs and practices should be understood in relation to their cultural contexts. Cultural context helps determine whether a belief is shared within a person's community.
Aberrant salience : The attribution of unusual significance to otherwise ordinary stimuli. Misassigned importance may prompt explanations that develop into delusional beliefs.
Psychosis : A condition involving impaired contact with shared reality, often including delusions or hallucinations. Delusions are one possible symptom within the broader phenomenon of psychosis.
Confabulation : The production of false or distorted memories without deliberate deception, often associated with neurological impairment. Confabulations fill memory gaps rather than necessarily expressing fixed beliefs.
Insight : Recognition of one's own mental state, condition, or circumstances. Limited recognition that a belief may be mistaken is common in delusions.
Predictive processing : A framework in which the brain combines prior expectations with sensory evidence to interpret the world. It models how distorted expectations or evidence weighting might sustain unusual beliefs.
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