
People perceive intentions not only in human interactions, but also when observing simple movements, such as geometric shapes. When these intention attributions fail, conditions such as paranoia (the belief in malicious intent) and excessive teleological thinking (seeing purpose in random events) can arise. People with greater paranoia or teleological thinking have often reported seeing pursuits when there was none (false alarms).
People can perceive intentions not only when interacting with other people, but also when observing simple movements, such as geometric shapes.
These perceptions arise from basic visual features, such as proximity, direction, and interaction patterns, and are rapidly processed by specific areas of the brain that handle social information.
When this intention attribution process fails, symptoms such as paranoia (the belief that others have malicious intent) and excessive teleological thinking (the tendency to see purpose in unintended events) can arise.
Although they seem different, they are both related to Theory of Mind (ToM), which is the ability to attribute mental states to other people.
In paranoid people, a deficit in ToM may make it difficult to reason about hypothetical intentions. In teleological thinking, ToM may be involved because seeing purpose involves imagining agents with intentions.
Several studies have investigated whether these complex beliefs, such as paranoia and teleology, may have deeper roots in how we perceive the world around us.

Yale researchers explored how people perceive social intentions, even in very simple situations, such as watching geometric shapes (disks) moving on a screen.
They investigated whether higher-level beliefs, such as paranoia (the belief in malicious intentions of others) and teleology (the tendency to attribute purpose to unintended events), could be influenced by basic perceptual mechanisms related to the perception of intentions.
The study was based on the idea that our social perception can begin with simple visual cues, such as distance, direction, and relative motion.
To investigate this, the scientists used an experiment in which participants watched moving disks on a screen. They were asked to identify whether one disk (“wolf”) was chasing another (“sheep”). In some situations, the chase was real, but in others, it was either nonexistent, the movement was just random, or reflected visual manipulations that created the illusion of pursuit.
The difficulty of the task was manipulated by varying the “noise” in the wolf’s movement. For example, when the wolf followed the sheep with high accuracy, the pursuit was easy to detect. But when the movement was less direct, the perception of pursuit became ambiguous.
This design allowed the researchers to measure whether people with paranoid or teleological tendencies were more likely to "see" pursuit where there was none.

Pursuit-present (A) and pursuit-absent (B) conditions. A) is a graphical example of a pursuit-present test, where the wolf chases the sheep with a pursuit finesse of 30°. The sheep moves randomly across the screen, as do the distractor disks. B) is a graphical display of a pursuit-absent control condition, where the wolf chases an invisible sheep that mirrors the movements of another randomly moving disk.
To analyze responses, the researchers used both behavioral reports (what participants said they saw) and confidence measures (how certain they were of their answers).
In addition, they correlated these results with individual characteristics, such as participants’ tendency toward paranoia or teleological thinking.
The results show that people with greater paranoia or teleological thinking more often reported seeing pursuits when there were none (false alarms).
These participants also had more difficulty correctly identifying which disc was the “wolf” or the “sheep.”
These people were extremely confident in their answers, even when they were wrong. This confidence in misperceptions is similar to what occurs in social hallucinations.
Although both groups showed perceptual errors, the specific characteristics of the errors varied. Paranoids had more difficulty identifying the sheep (the victim), while teleologicals had more difficulty identifying the wolf (the pursuer).
These results suggest that beliefs such as paranoia and teleology may be rooted in basic, automatic perceptual mechanisms. These aberrant beliefs are not simply “high-level” reasoning, but may arise from automatic interpretations of simple visual stimuli.

Furthermore, the results indicate that neural systems involved in social perception, such as the temporoparietal junction and the posterior superior temporal sulcus, play a crucial role in how we process intentions, even in seemingly trivial situations.
These systems are more closely related to “lower” (visual) perception than to “higher” (cognitive) reasoning.
The researchers linked higher-level beliefs (paranoia and teleology) with perceptual errors in simple visual tasks, such as identifying stalking.
This helps to understand how social hallucinations, a common feature of disorders such as schizophrenia, may be related to basic perceptual processes.
The approach may also contribute to new methods of diagnosing and treating disorders involving aberrant thoughts and beliefs.
READ MORE:
Paranoid and teleological thinking give rise to distinct social hallucinations in vision
Santiago Castiello, Joan Danielle K. Ongchoco, Benjamin van Buren, Brian J. Scholl & Philip R. Corlett
Communications Psychology, volume 2, Article number: 117 (2024)
Abstract:
Paranoia (believing others intend harm) and excess teleological thinking (ascribing too much purpose) are non-consensual beliefs about agents. Human vision rapidly detects agents and their intentions. Might paranoia and teleology have roots in visual perception? Using displays that evoke the impression that one disc (‘wolf’) is chasing another (‘sheep’), we find that paranoia and teleology involve perceiving chasing when there is none (studies 1 and 2) — errors we characterize as social hallucinations. When asked to identify the wolf or the sheep (studies 3, 4a, and 4b), we find high-paranoia participants struggled to identify sheep, while high-teleology participants were impaired at identifying wolves — both despite high-confidence. Both types of errors correlated with hallucinatory percepts in the real world. Although paranoia and teleology both involve excess perception of agency, the current results collectively suggest a perceptual distinction between the two, perhaps with clinical import.
Comments