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com
Consciousness
and
Cognition
Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 932941
www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Models of misbelief: Integrating motivational

and decit theories of delusions
Ryan McKay

a,b,*

, Robyn Langdon a, Max Coltheart

Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Australia

School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Received 10 July 2006
Available online 28 February 2007

Abstract
The impact of our desires and preferences upon our ordinary, everyday beliefs is well-documented [Gilovich, T.
(1991). How we know what isnt so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.]. The
inuence of such motivational factors on delusions, which are instances of pathological misbelief, has tended however
to be neglected by certain prevailing models of delusion formation and maintenance. This paper explores a distinction
between two general classes of theoretical explanation for delusions; the motivational and the decit. Motivational
approaches view delusions as extreme instances of self-deception; as defensive attempts to relieve pain and distress. Deficit approaches, in contrast, view delusions as the consequence of defects in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms,
underpinned by neuroanatomical or neurophysiological abnormalities. It is argued that although there are good reasons
to be sceptical of motivational theories (particularly in their more oridly psychodynamic manifestations), recent experiments conrm that motives are important causal forces where delusions are concerned. It is therefore concluded that the
most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unication of both motivational and decit
approaches.
2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Delusions; Motivational factors; Self-deception; Cognitive neuropsychiatry

1. What are delusions?

If illusions involve low-level misperceptions of reality, then delusions involve cases of high-level misbelief
instances where the avowed contents of an individuals beliefs run counter to a generally accepted reality. The
prevailing diagnostic view of delusions is that they are rationally untenable beliefs that are clung to regardless
of counter-evidence and despite the eorts of family, friends and clinicians to dissuade the deluded individual
(American Psychiatric Association, 1995).
*
Corresponding author. School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies, Charles Sturt University, Panorama Avenue, Bathurst, NSW
2795, Australia.
E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (R. McKay).

1053-8100/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.01.003

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Delusions are observed in an array of psychiatric and neurological conditions. They have been referred to
as the sine qua non of psychosis (Peters, 2001, p. 193); together with hallucinations, delusions constitute
rst-rank symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, schizoaective
disorder and delusional disorder. Such disorders aect around one percent of the population and have devastating consequences in terms of suering and loss of functioning. Delusions also occur in association with
dementia, temporal lobe epilepsy, Huntingtons disease, Parkinsons disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic
brain injury.
Delusions can vary both thematically and in degree of circumscription. Thematically speaking, delusions
range from the bizarre and exotic (e.g. the delusion that ones head has been replaced by a pumpkin or that
one has been raped by the devil) to the relatively humdrum (e.g. an unjustied conviction regarding the indelity of a spouse, or an overwhelming suspicion of persecution by ones neighbours). This is a nosologically
important distinction, as the presence of bizarre delusions satises the symptom criteria for a diagnosis of
schizophrenia (even in the absence of other psychotic symptoms), while precluding a diagnosis of delusional
disorder.
In terms of scope, delusions vary from the circumscribed and monothematic to the widespread and polythematic (Langdon & Coltheart, 2000). A patient with Capgras delusion, for example, may believe that a
loved one (usually a spouse or close relative) has been replaced by a physically identical impostor, yet remain
quite lucid and grounded on other topics. Other individuals evince a more extensive loss of contact with reality. Nobel laureate John Nash, for example, believed not only that aliens were communicating with him, but
also that he was the left foot of God and the Emperor of Antarctica (David, 1999).
2. Theoretical approaches: Motivational versus decit
There have been many proposed theoretical explanations of delusions (for interesting reviews see Blaney,
1999; Garety & Freeman, 1999; Winters & Neale, 1983). Among the various models that have been put forward can be discerned two general classes of theoretical explanation, the motivational and the decit (Bentall,
Corcoran, Howard, Blackwood, & Kinderman, 2001; Blaney, 1999; Hingley, 1992; Venneri & Shanks, 2004;
Winters & Neale, 1983). In brief, theories of the rst type view delusions as serving a defensive, palliative function; as representing an attempt (however misguided) to relieve pain, tension and distress. Such theories regard
delusions as providing a kind of psychological refuge or spiritual salve, and consider delusions explicable in
terms of the emotional benets they confer. This approach to theorizing about delusions has been prominently
exemplied by the psychodynamic tradition with its concept of defense, and by the philosophical notion of
self-deception. From a motivational perspective delusions constitute psychologically dexterous sleights of
mind (McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, 2005), deft mental manoeuvres executed for the maintenance of psychic integrity and the reduction of anxiety.
Motivational accounts of delusions can be generally distinguished, as a major explanatory class, from theories that involve the notion of decit or defect. Such theories view delusions as the consequence of fundamental cognitive or perceptual abnormalities, ranging from wholesale failures in certain crucial elements of
cognitive-perceptual machinery, to milder dysfunctions involving the distorted operation of particular processes. Delusions thus eectively constitute disorders of beliefdisruptions or alterations in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms such that individuals come to hold erroneous beliefs with remarkable tenacity.
A decit approach to theorizing about delusions would seem to be implicit in the eld of cognitive neuropsychiatry (David & Halligan, 1996). Cognitive neuropsychiatry is a branch of cognitive neuropsychology, a
discipline which investigates disordered cognition in order to learn more about normal cognition (Coltheart,
2002; Ellis & Young, 1988). Cognitive neuropsychiatry involves applying the logic of cognitive neuropsychology to psychiatric symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations (Ellis & Young, 1990; Langdon &
Coltheart, 2000; Stone & Young, 1997). The aim of cognitive neuropsychiatry is thus to develop a model
of the processes underlying the normal functioning of the belief formation system, and to explain delusions
in terms of damage to processes implicated in this model of normal functioning.
Perhaps the best way to represent the distinction between the motivational and decit approaches is to contrast a motivational account of a particular delusion with a decit account of the same delusion. Let us take as
our example the Fregoli delusion, rst described in 1927 by Courbon and Fail (see Ellis, Whitley, & Luaute,

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R. McKay et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 932941

1994). Patients suering from the Fregoli delusion believe that they are being followed around by a familiar
person (or people) who is in disguise and thus unrecognizable (Davies & Coltheart, 2000; c.f. Banov, Kulick,
Oepen, & Pope, 1993). The delusion was named after an Italian actor renowned for his ability to impersonate
people (Ellis & Young, 1990). A motivational explanation of a particular case of this delusion was suggested
by Collacot and Napier (1991; cited in Mojtabai, 1994), who argued that a case of Fregoli delusion in which
the patient misidentied certain unknown people as her deceased father might be explicable in terms of wish
fulllment. The development of this womans delusional belief is here viewed as serving a psychological function, namely gratifying her wish that her father still be present. This explicitly motivational formulation, with
its notion of wish fulllment, is exquisitely Freudian, and consistent with a long tradition of psychodynamic
theorizing.
Such an account brooks comparison with the decit explanation of Davies and Coltheart (2000). Davies
and Coltheart integrate a key notion from prevalent decit accounts of the aforementioned Capgras delusion
(the belief that a loved one has been replaced by an impostor), which implicate a dissociation between dierent
components of face recognition (e.g. Ellis & Young, 1990; Stone & Young, 1997). The proposal involves two
components of face recognition, an overt pattern-matching component and an aective component which
provides an experience of familiarity when we encounter people we know. Whereas prevailing decit
accounts of the Capgras delusion suggest that it stems from a diminished aective response to familiar faces
(see below), Davies and Coltheart (2000) follow Ramachandran and Blakeslee (1998; c.f. Christodoulou,
1976,1977; Feinberg and Keenan, 2005) in proposing that the Fregoli delusion involves a heightened aective
response to unfamiliar faces. The ensuing discordance between an experience of the way a stranger looks
(unfamiliar, unrecognizable) and the way they feel (familiar) might lead to the adoption of the Fregoli belief
(c.f. Ellis & Young, 1990).
3. The two decit model
The notion that anomalous perceptual experiences may stimulate delusional hypotheses is a key element of a
current model of delusion formation and maintenance known as the two decit or two factor model (Coltheart, 2002; Davies & Coltheart, 2000; Davies, Coltheart, Langdon, & Breen, 2001; Langdon & Coltheart, 2000).
This model incorporates an empiricist perspective on delusion formation (Campbell, 2001), taking as its point of
departure theoretical work by Maher and colleagues (e.g. Maher & Ross, 1984). Maher maintained that delusions do not arise via defective reasoning, but rather constitute rational responses to unusual perceptual experiences, which are in turn caused by a spectrum of neuropsychological abnormalities. Coltheart, Davies, Langdon
and Breen agree that such anomalous experiences may indeed be necessary for the development of delusions, and
they allocate such experiences the status of Decit-1 in their two-decit theory.
An experiment conducted by Ellis, Young, Quayle, and de Pauw (1997; see also Hirstein and Ramachandran, 1997) provided support for Mahers contention that delusions are responses to anomalous perceptual
experiences. Ellis et al. (1997) recorded skin-conductance responses (SCRsan index of autonomic activity)
while showing Capgras patients and control participants a series of predominantly unfamiliar faces, with occasional familiar faces interspersed. They found that whereas control participants showed signicantly greater
SCRs to familiar faces than unfamiliar faces, Capgras patients failed to demonstrate a pattern of autonomic
discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces, showing SCRs of equivalent magnitude to photographs
of both types.
Further support for the claim that anomalous perceptual experiences are implicated in the formation of
delusions comes from the work of Breen, Caine, and Coltheart (2001). These authors investigated the rare
delusion of mirrored-self misidentication, whereby patients misidentify their own reected image. Breen
et al. thoroughly examined two patients with this delusion,1 and found that whereas the rst patient
(FE) demonstrated a marked decit in face processing, the second patient (TH, whose face processing
was intact) appeared to be mirror agnosic (Ramachandran, Altschuler, & Hillyer, 1997; see Turnbull,
1997 for a gripe about this nomenclature), in that he showed an impaired appreciation of mirror spatial rela1

See Breen, Caine, Coltheart, Hendy, and Roberts (2000) for transcripts of interviews with the two patients.

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935

tions and was unable to interact appropriately with mirrors. These ndings implicate two potential routes to
development of the mirrored-self misidentication delusion, underpinned by two types of anomalous perceptual experience; on the one hand an anomalous experience of faces, and on the other an anomalous experience
of reected space.
In addition to their suggestions about Fregoli delusion and mirrored-self misidentication delusion, Coltheart and colleagues identify perceptual anomalies that may potentially be involved in a series of other delusions, including delusions of alien control, thought insertion and Cotard delusion (the belief that ones self is
dead; see McKay & Cipolotti, 2007). They note, however, that such rst-decit experiences are not sucient
for the development of delusions, as some individuals with similar anomalous perceptual experiences do not
develop delusory beliefs about those experiences.2 Coltheart and colleagues thus claim that Mahers account is
incomplete, and invoke a second explanatory factora decit in the machinery of belief revision. Individuals
with this second decit, it is hypothesised, are unable to reject implausible candidates for belief once they are
suggested by rst-factor perceptual anomalies.
4. Backlash
It would appear that the advent and ascent of rigorous cognitive and neurological models of mental disorders has occasioned something of a backlash against historically prevalent psychodynamic modes of theorizing (Gabbard, 1994). In the eld of delusions, recent years have seen psychodynamic accounts usurped by
their cognitive neuropsychiatric counterparts (McKay et al., 2005). Inuential cognitive neuropsychiatric
accounts such as that of Ellis and Young (1990) and Stone and Young (1997), which explain delusions as
the output of a faulty cognitive system, disregard psychodynamic inuences in favour of more austere psychological factors (i.e. cold cognitive factors). Likewise, the two decit theory of Coltheart and colleagues, outlined above, which aims to explain delusions of all types (Langdon & Coltheart, 2000, p. 184, italics in
original), contains little provision at present for motivational factors.
Psychodynamic theorists and practitioners have been roundly censured for their notoriously unsound methodologies and outrageous theoretical presumption. Cognitive neuropsychiatric accounts (Davies et al., 2001;
Ellis & Young, 1990; Stone & Young, 1997), by contrast, are elegant and theoretically rigorous, yielding
empirically testable predictions. Cognitive neuropsychiatric research has shown that at least some delusions
are neuropsychological in origin. One wonders, therefore, whether all delusions might be adequately explained
in terms of neuropsychological damage, in which case motivational ideas could be dispensed with altogether.
5. Persecutory delusions
The motivational explanation of Fregoli delusion discussed above strikes one, at least initially, as rather
fanciful and far-fetched. The manufacture of Fregoli symptoms seems, after all, a rather convoluted route
for the psyche to take in order to satisfy a wish for the continued presence of a deceased relative. The fact
that this account fails completely as an explanation for cases of Fregoli delusion where strangers are misidentied as known, but hostile, persecutors, poses an additional obstacle to its success.3
Claims about motivational causes of delusion are more plausible elsewhere, however, and the domain of
paranoid and persecutory beliefs is an example where there are well-worked out motivational interpretations,
notably those of Bentall and colleagues (e.g. Bentall & Kaney, 1996; Kinderman & Bentall, 1996, 1997).
How might a decit model such as the two-decit theory of Coltheart and colleagues account for cases of
persecutory delusions? In line with the models empiricist perspective on delusion formation (Campbell, 2001),
the rst requirement is that a credible candidate for Decit-1 be proposed. In other words, one needs to
2

See, for example, Langdon and Colthearts (2000) discussion of delusional Capgras patients versus the non-delusional patients with
damage to bilateral ventromedial frontal regions of the brain tested by Tranel, Damasio, and Damasio (1995).
3
This, of course, is not to suggest that all cases of Fregoli delusion will have the same explanation. It is virtually an axiom of cognitive
neuropsychology that for many particular symptoms a number of idiosyncratic aetiological pathways are possible (Coltheart, 2002). Breen
et al. (2001), for example, identied two potential cognitive neuropsychological routes to development of the mirrored-self
misidentication delusion.

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identify some kind of anomalous perceptual experience that might plausibly suggest a paranoid delusional
hypothesis. The second requirement is that this candidate decit be present in both deluded and non-deluded
individuals, i.e. there must exist some individuals with parallel perceptual anomalies who do not develop
delusional beliefs grounded in those experiences.
Appropriate candidates for Decit-1 are not dicult to nd. For example, claims of an association between
deafness and paranoia have been made for many years (e.g. Houston & Royse, 1954; Piker, 1937). The empirical
support for this connection is admittedly somewhat equivocal, with some studies reporting evidence of the association (e.g. Cooper & Curry, 1976; Cooper, Garside, & Kay, 1976; Moore, 1981; Zimbardo, Andersen, & Kabat,
1981) and others nding little support for it (e.g. Blazer, Hays, & Salive, 1996; Thomas, 1981). Nevertheless, in
terms of the above-stated theoretical requirements, the gradual onset of deafness ts the bill rather well. One can
at least conceive of how experiences of surrounding voices at lower than expected volume might stimulate the
delusional hypothesis that people are whispering about me. If coupled with a decit in belief evaluation abilities (Decit-2), this dubious hypothesis may be uncritically accepted. If Decit-2 is not present, the delusional
hypothesis will, instead, be rejected and the more plausible belief that one is suering hearing loss will be adopted.
As noted above, the two-decit explanatory model of Coltheart and colleagues is intended to encompass all
forms of delusional psychopathology, yet makes little provision for motivational causes of delusion. In an
attempt to examine the scope of this theory, we have recently conducted a series of empirical investigations
of such putative motivational causes, focussing on persecutory delusions. Evidence that motivational factors
do play a role in the aetiology of persecutory delusions would call for a theoretical overhaul of the two-decit
model in order to incorporate these factors.
5.1. Investigating discrepancies between overt and covert self-esteem
Bentall and colleagues (Bentall & Kaney, 1996; Kinderman & Bentall, 1996, 1997) are inuential advocates
of a motivational model of persecutory delusions. Consistent with the traditional psychodynamic emphasis on
projection as a mechanism of defence against intolerable inner feelings (Freud, 1895), Bentall and colleagues
have claimed that persecutory delusions are constructed defensively, for the maintenance of self-esteem. A key
prediction of their model is that persecutory delusions will be associated with a discrepancy between relatively
high measures of conscious, overt self-esteem and relatively low measures of unconscious, covert self-esteem.
A variety of studies (e.g. Kinderman, 1994; Lyon, Kaney, & Bentall, 1994) have attempted to investigate this
hypothesis (for reviews see Bentall et al., 2001; Garety & Freeman, 1999). The ndings of such studies, however, are disconcertingly equivocal, with a number of studies suering from methodological aws.
We (McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, 2007) have recently re-examined this hypothesis by utilizing a new and
highly inuential methodology for eliciting covert eects, the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald,
McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Following Greenwald and Farnham (2000), our study adapted the IAT for the
measurement of covert self-esteem by assessing automatic associations of the self with positive or negative aective valence. Once the eects of co-morbid depression had been taken into account, persecutory deluded
patients were found to have lower covert self-esteem than healthy controls and remitted patients. On two measures of overt self-esteem, however, the persecutory deluded group did not dier signicantly (again, with
depression covaried) from the other groups. These results are thus consistent with Bentall and colleagues suggestion that persecutory delusions are associated with a discrepancy between overt and covert self-esteem, and
are consistent with psychodynamic accounts of paranoia and persecutory delusions dating back to Freud
(1895). Our results receive additional support from a similar recent study conducted by Moritz, Werner, and
von Collani (in press), who also employed the IAT to investigate the Bentall et al. model. Patients with schizophrenia (with or without current persecutory delusions) were found to have lower covert self-esteem than
healthy controls. Although the overt self-esteem of patients with persecutory delusions was also markedly lower
than that of the control participants, it was higher than that of non-paranoid patients with schizophrenia.
5.2. Need for closure
A second investigation (McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, in press) aimed to replicate reported connections
between persecutory delusions and need for closure. Need for closure (Kruglanski, 1989; Webster & Kruglanski,

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937

1994) is a motivational construct, associated with a preference for certainty and predictability. Colbert and Peters
(2002) have suggested that a high need for closure may account for the tendency of certain individuals with anomalous perceptual experiences to develop delusory beliefs about those experiences. Bentall and Swarbrick (2003)
had found that patients with persecutory delusions (both current and remitted) displayed a greater need for
closure than healthy control participants. Our study showed that patients with a history of persecutory delusions
scored higher than healthy controls on need for closure, thus conrming the relationship between persecutory
delusions and need for closure. This pattern held for some but not all facets of need for closure, a fact that is consistent with three other very recent investigations of need for closure and delusions (Colbert, Peters, & Garety,
2006; Freeman et al., 2006; McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, 2006).
The above investigations have found compelling evidence that motivational factors play a vital role in the
genesis of persecutory delusions. In particular, these studies have shown that persecutory delusions are associated with discrepancies between overt and covert measures of self-esteem, consistent with the defensive theoretical scheme of Bentall and colleagues; and that persecutory delusions are associated with the motivational
construct of need for closure. The implication of these ndings is that motivational factors are important,
despite their almost wilful neglect by certain cognitive neuropsychiatric models. How then are we to best theoretically integrate such factors into existing cognitive neuropsychiatric accounts?
6. A theoretical synthesis
We argue that although there are good reasons to be sceptical of psychoanalytic theories, empirical studies
such as those reported above demonstrate that these theories do contain a notion of key importance for models
of delusions and belief formation - the insight that motives can be important doxastic forces (doxastic = of or
relating to belief). We propose therefore that motives be incorporated into the two-factor scheme of Coltheart
and colleagues as a rst-factor source of unreliable doxastic inputa means by which individuals prone to the
second factor are led astray when forming beliefs, such that resulting beliefs track desires rather than reality. In
this modied two-factor account of delusion formation, the rst factor constitutes whatever sources of information suggest a particular delusory belief, be they anomalous perceptual experiences or defensive desires. Individuals with the second factor would be prone to giving undue weight to unreliable sensory information, and
liable to having their belief-formation systems derailed and overridden by motivational factors.
How might this motivationally modied two-factor account be applied to persecutory delusions? We have
already touched upon the possibility that deafness might constitute a perceptually anomalous Decit-1 in such
delusions. It may be that in certain cases persecutory delusions arise in the context of multiple relevant rst-factor
sources, including both aberrant perceptual experiences and defensive desires. A man with encroaching deafness,
for example, might be highly motivated to prevent evidence of this inrmity from reaching consciousness.4 He
might therefore experience an organically underpinned perceptual anomalythe voices of others at lower than
normal volumein a context of wanting to believe that his faculties are still intact. These two sources of doxastic
inputthe hearing loss and the desire to deny the hearing lossmight jointly suggest the paranoid belief that
others are whispering about him. Such a belief would both account for the perceptual evidence and simultaneously satisfy the desire. Given an additional context of inadequate belief evaluation abilities (Decit-2), an implausible paranoid hypothesis might be elaborated into a full-blown persecutory delusion rather than being rejected.
The evidence that persecutory delusions are associated with discrepancies between overt and covert selfesteem allows the motivational element in the above story to be further elucidated. The individual described
4

This repression characterization of motivated misbelief (in which motives operate unconsciously and individuals hold contradictory
beliefs at dierent levels of awareness) is widely accepted but strictly speaking unnecessary. Moreover, it is vulnerable to philosophical
paradoxes such as the static and dynamic paradoxes of self-deception (Mele, 1997). The static paradox consists in a self-deceived
person being simultaneously in two contradictory statesthe state of both believing and disbelieving a particular proposition. The
dynamic paradox arises out of the fact that in order for a person to engage in self-deception, they must know what they are doing; yet in
order for the project to work, they must not know what they are doing. Mele (forthcoming) oers a deationary account of selfdeception that skirts these problems. In his account self-deception occurs when a desire that p contributes to a belief that p. Mele
outlines how this can happen unparadoxically, as when an individuals desire that p leads them to focus on evidence suggestive of p and to
fail to attend to evidence that counts against p. Thus our character who is motivated to not form the belief that his hearing is failing need
not hold this belief unconsciously. He need not hold this belief at any level if he has attended only to evidence that refutes it.

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R. McKay et al. / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 932941

may be motivated to avoid any evidence of his hearing impairment at least in part because such evidence is a
threat to his self-esteem. It may be that he has some covert awareness that his anomalous perceptual experiences signal encroaching hearing loss (equating to lowered covert self-esteem). Projection would then constitute the process whereby the perceptual experience and low covert self-esteem suggest the delusional
hypothesis: the cause of the perceptual anomaly is projected onto others (externally attributedsee Kinderman & Bentall, 1997), resulting in the belief that others are whispering about him.
Alternatively (or perhaps additionally), motives might enter the story at the level of the second factor, playing a role in the evaluation of doxastic input by constituting constraints on the processing of belief-related
information. Westen (1998) has discussed the connectionist notion of constraint satisfaction, noting that Psychodynamic theory can augment a connectionist model in proposing that aects and aectively charged
motives provide a second set of constraints, distinct from strictly cognitive or informational ones, that inuence the outcomes of parallel constraint-satisfaction processes (p. 359). Perhaps incoming doxastic information is ordinarily processed so as to satisfy motivational constraints as well as constraints of verisimilitude, in
which case it may be a feature of the second factor that the belief-formation system becomes unduly biased
toward satisfaction of the former. Need for closure is one such motivational constraint, separate from the alethic injunction to approximate reality. Our individual who experiences being surrounded by low volume voices
might be highly motivated to achieve some closure, to account for his anomalous perceptions. That other people are whispering around him might come very readily to mind and, rather than exploring alternative hypotheses, the paranoid belief that others are whispering may provide a satisfactory solution to his immediate
alethic and motivational constraints.5
Hypotheses such as these seem amenable to investigation via computational modelling techniques. Sahdra
and Thagard (2003) have recently applied a computational model of emotional coherence to successfully simulate a case of self-deception taken from Hawthornes novel The Scarlet Letter. These authors expanded an
implementation of the theory of explanatory coherence (see Thagard, 2000) by allowing units representing
propositions in an articial neural network to have valences as well as activations. The resulting system successfully self-deceived in that it yielded acceptance of false propositions, consistent with implemented preferences.
Comparable simulations might be used to model the beliefs of our hypothetical hearing-impaired individual.
For example, to simulate a case of factor one in the absence of factor two, one might utilise an explanatory
coherence implementation, such that input is simply the evidential propositions (e.g. the voices of my colleagues are at lower than normal volume) and the coherence associations between them. To simulate the conjunction of both factors, on the other hand, one might assign valences to units representing propositions (e.g. a
negative valence to the proposition I am deaf). Such speculations denote an area ripe for future research.
7. Conclusion
Baars (2000) argues that the scientic scepticism regarding psychodynamics is disproportionate, and marvels that few academic scientists are inclined to simply separate the wheat from the cha in Freudian
thought (p. 13).6 We have argued that sound reasons for scepticism notwithstanding, psychoanalytic theories
do indeed contain a notion that models of delusions may ignore at their peril, namely the insight that motives
5
Recent work by Bell, Halligan, and Ellis, submitted accords nicely with our suggestions here. Bell et al. investigated the relationship
between delusions and distress and found that reported distress was signicantly greater when there was a mismatch between levels of
anomalous perceptual experience and levels of delusional ideationin particular when levels of the former exceeded levels of the latter. It
may be that perceptual anomalies will occasion distress so long as they remain unaccounted for, and that insofar as delusions provide an
account of such anomalies, the distress will lessen. The extent to which individuals can tolerate unexplained anomalies may eectively
constitute their need for closure.
6
We are not alone in advocating the integration of organic and psychological (including psychodynamic) factors in theorising about
delusions and related conditions. Turnbull, Solms and colleagues, for example, champion a neuropsychoanalytic approach (see also
Sackeim, 1986) to anosognosic delusion (Turnbull & Solms, in press; Turnbull, Jones, & Reed-Screen, 2002; Turnbull, Berry, & Evans,
2004; see also Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998) and confabulation (Turnbull & Solms, in press; Solms, 2000; Turnbull, Jenkins, &
Rowley, 2004; Turnbull, Evans, & Owen, 2004; Fotopoulou, Solms, & Turnbull, 2004; see also Conway & Tacchi, 1996; Kinsbourne,
2000). Fleminger (Fleminger, 1992, 1994; Fleminger & Burns, 1993) has emphasised the need to attend to both psychological and organic
factors in explaining mental symptoms in general, and delusional misidentications in particular.

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939

can be potent doxastic forces. Taking as our point of departure the two decit model of Coltheart and colleagues, we have explored a theoretical integration between the motivational and decit approaches to delusions, with the aim of showing that a single overarching theory is not only scientically desirable, but
theoretically viable.
Acknowledgments
This article is a modied version of a paper previously published in the Proceedings of the Articial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) 2005 convention symposium on Agents that want and like:
motivational and emotional roots of cognition and action, pp. 7683. The work was supported by a Training
Fellowship in Psychiatric Research from The New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, awarded to the rst
author.
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