Cognitive Gain or Handicap: Magical Ideation and Self-Absorption in Clinical and Non-clinical Participants

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to examine magical ideation and absorption traits across non-clinical and clinical groups to determine their potential adaptive and maladaptive functions.Method: We enrolled 760 healthy participants from neighboring communities (female = 53.2%). Moreover, we recruited 318 patients (female = 66.5%), which included 25, 183, and 110 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, and mood disorders, respectively. Potentially adaptive and maladaptive sociocognitive functions were measured to determine the role of magical ideation and self-absorption in patients with psychiatric disorders.Results: The degree of magical ideation and absorption gradually increased in the following order: anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Furthermore, enhanced self-absorption-related enhanced consciousness traits were essential indicators of the presence of self-integration weakness in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.Conclusion: Magical ideation and psychological absorption may be considered as mental model construction functions, which result in both gains and handicaps in social adaptation.

Absorption and Mindfulness Reflect Distinct Patterns of Attentional Control and Self-Related Processing

“…The highly interrelated nature of our constructs suggests that there may be theoretically important mediation effects among the constructs. In particular, given the differential associations of self-absorption and mindful/experiential self-focus with mental health reported in previous literature (Huffziger & Kuehner, 2009; Kállai et al, 2021; Perona-Garcelán et al., 2013; Watkins & Teasdale, 2004), we reasoned that any predictive power of attentional control on absorption and mindfulness might be mediated by self-related processing. We included all study constructs in the mediation analyses, given the possibility of “inconsistent mediation” (MacKinnon et al, 2000) in which opposite-signed direct and indirect effects may render the total correlation between two constructs nonsignificant.…”

“…One important way in which absorption may differ from mindfulness is with respect to how attention is directed externally toward the environment and internally toward the self. Tellegen and Atkinson's (1974) definition of absorption emphasizes altered states of processing reality which include applying "self-like" qualities to objects of attention at the exclusion of other elements of the environment, and maladaptive forms of self-absorption have been associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia (Kállai et al, 2021). Mindfulness emphasizes moment-to-moment awareness of the self as the subject of ongoing experience (i.e., awareness of experiential self; Baer, 2009), and experiential self-focus has been associated with positive mental health outcomes such as increased specificity of autobiographical memories in individuals with depression (Watkins & Teasdale, 2004).…”

The Role of Shame in Schizophrenia Delusion

“…As to magical ideation, our finding is in line with different studies (Garzitto et al, 2016). In fact, magical thinking is viewed as an indicator of overall disruption of cognitive processes (Karcher and Shean, 2012), because it involves the perception of a loss of logical supervision over subjective experiences of reality (Kállai et al, 2021). In this regard, the MIS scale has been adopted as a quantitative measure of psychotic-like experiences (Peters et al, 1999).…”

Magical thinking in individuals with high polygenic risk for schizophrenia but no non-affective psychoses—a general population study

“…This association was comparatively weak but, nevertheless, supported our main finding that PRS may predict mild forms of deviant thinking. Specifically, high self-absorption is related to hallucination proneness [55] and is typically elevated in schizophrenia-spectrum patients [56]. Further, high selfabsorption predisposes to intrusive experiences [57], referring to situations where one's past memories are not consciously processed but are experienced as some kind of non-specific distress in the present moment.…”