MENTAL MIMICRY Faking mental illness can delude someone into believing they are truly ill.
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People who fake symptoms of mental illness can convince themselves that they genuinely have those symptoms, a new study suggests. People will also adopt and justify signs of illness that they never reported themselves when presented with manipulated answers, according to the study published online July 9 in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. Not only do the findings demonstrate that deliberately feigning illness can evolve into an unconscious embellishment of symptoms, they indicate that self-perception of mental health is susceptible to suggestion. The study has particularly serious implications for cases in which people fake mental illness to take advantage of the legal system.
"This study shows a couple ways people come to believe they have troubles they wouldn't otherwise endorse," says Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, renowned for her research on misinformation and false memories. "One way is to give them misinformation about what they reported before, but this study shows yet another kind of suggestion, which is to induce people to, in essence, lie. And it leaves them with a residual effect to keep doing so. Once you get people to report a particular symptom, like 'I have a little trouble concentrating,' even if they would never say that on their own, you turn them into someone who later on says they do have trouble concentrating."
In the new study psychologist Harald Merckelbach and colleagues at Maastricht University in the Netherlands first asked 31 undergraduates to read a story about a criminal defendant who had trespassed on a medieval building, dislodged some stones that fatally wounded a young girl, and received a charge of manslaughter. The experimenters told all participants to pretend they were the defendant in the story and complete a 75-item true-or-false self-report survey of mental health called the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS). The SIMS includes "very bizarre and extreme symptoms that most real patients would not endorse," Merckelbach says, such as hearing ever-present voices or the sensation of 1,000-kilogram weights attached to one's legs. The researchers asked one subset of the subjects to fill out the survey honestly, instructing the rest to exaggerate their symptoms in hopes of feigning a mental illness and minimizing criminal responsibility.
Once the undergraduates had completed the survey, they were asked to spend an hour on games and tasks like sudoku puzzles before completing the SIMS once again. This time, the researchers instructed both subgroups to fill out the survey honestly (although still playing the role of defendant): participants who had feigned illness were told that they had been detected as fakers and needed to complete the survey with truthful answers; the other group was told that sometimes people change their minds about their symptoms and so they should fill out the SIMS again. The group that initially reported their symptoms honestly hardly changed their answers. But the mental illness pretenders continued to exaggerate their symptoms, despite the request for sincerity.
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13 Comments
Add CommentAs a Clinical hypnotherapist one thing we get people to do is to do a lot of positive imagery, so this thinking yourself well has been going on for years...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a slippery slope toward charlatanism! Encouraging positive imagery doesn't have to be dishonest since everyone has strong points, but I would draw the line at a psychologist faking a patient's strengths through lying and manipulation of questonnaire answers. In fact, that might be something a healer could (and should) be sued for doing, whatever the therapeutic results. I'm not a physician, but how would lies fit into the guidelines of the Hippocratic Oath?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remember faking a Ninth Grade attitude (not aptitude) test we all had to take. It was big on rating ourselves for intro- and extraversion. I was a great reader of "loner" adventure stories from Natty Bumppo to Raymond Chandler to sci-fi heroes. Although an ordunary ambivert who loved parties as much as reading, ambivert seemed too ordinary so I skewed my responses toward rather extreme introversion. For some reason that got it out of system and from then on it was a lot more fun to cultivate ny extraversion! Not exactly the result these researchers got.
Doesn't this article describe many different kinds of hypochondria, not just mental? Practically everyone has at least a slight tendency to exaggerate worries about health, I'd imagine, just as everyone benefits now and then from the placebo effect. But I wouldn't want psychologists or physicians faking "positive thinking"! I shudder to think that they would encourage New Agers who already believe they can psych or natural-remedy themselves to good health and suddenly find out it's too late to treat a metastasized cancer . It ain't all in the head! (I never liked Norman Vincent Peale anyhow.)
I find it amazing that people might think this wasn't the case. A person can convince themselves of anything, given the time and I am sure many of you would agree that while you won't stop a metastasized cancer from spreading, it could help you lose weight, sleep, and generally feel better (or worse if that is the choice).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know happier people live longer... that should tell you something.
Whether we like it or not "fake it till you make it" has a lot of merit both for faking negatives in our life or the positives. The faking creates a feedback loop that propagates itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut as rightly pointed out, this has its limitations. It does not cure cancer, though it can help the procedure. For those familiar with the AQAL concept of Ken Wilber, this faking, or positive imagery is only half the story belonging to the left hand side of the quadrants. What the" new-age"ians miss, is that to complete the picture we need the AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels) approach where the external scientific observations and actions of the right-hand side quadrants (external medical observation, scrutiny and application) are also required for a full recovery.
As long as we are aware of this, we do not need to deny "positive imagery" advice.
Last but not least: even Norman Vincent Peale has admitted he is not such a positive person after all. His book was to compensate for the negative aspects of himself he had disowned. We are all a bit of both.
I think this also shows the power of even a false diagnosis, and how it can lead to an incorporation into the self concept.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: bongobimbo 7/28/10
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good points raised. In fact there is now a suggestion to take "intention" out of criminal justice, as people can lie and believe themselves. The article in the 1/12/10 issue of PNAS (www.pnas.org), The Lucretian Swerve, provides proof that "Free Will" does not exist from a neurobiological viewpoint. And if people are really just "bags of molecules" that can be manipulated, our justice system should change the basis for punishment.
This is a very interesting read. Science is all about evidence. Based on the research and studies performed, it shows that there is a significant change in the group that constantly lied about their symptoms and a consistency in those who weren't. I truly believe that you are who you make yourself to be. I came from a country where PSYCHOLOGY does not exist. Labeling individuals with disorders does not exist. No one in my country believes that they are sick of something such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks etc... because there are no Psychiatrist or Psychologist to label them with such type of disorders. Additionally, the media does not talk about such things since again, this does not exist. The people of this country does not have knowledge in these kind of disorders, therefore, they can't label nor fool themselves from having experienced such symptoms. Now, this leaves me questioning if CULTURE have a huge impact on this? How about MORALITY?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you examine symptoms of something you'd never considered before, it's hard to forget that you then saw a bit of those behavioral aspects in yourself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just need to clear something up:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>The experimenters told all participants to pretend they were the defendant in the story and complete a 75-item true-or-false self-report survey
and then:
>The group that initially reported their symptoms honestly hardly changed their answers
I thought all participants reported as the defendant at first?
I just need to clear something up:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>The experimenters told all participants to pretend they were the defendant in the story and complete a 75-item true-or-false self-report survey
and then:
>The group that initially reported their symptoms honestly hardly changed their answers
I thought all participants initially filled out the survey as the defendant?
In my experience, providing respite care for cognitively challenged individuals, I have born personal witness to both sides of this coin. The power of positive thinking comes to mind, which was determined by some to be a half thought out treatment. I was happy to find this method had advanced with books like "What to say when you talk to yourself". Helmstetter brought us a more complete therapeutic understanding/process for those desiring positive thinking methods. Which, I believe, in conjunction with other types of treatment, can be very effective in resolving a variety of psychiatric issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am skeptical though,especially with the rise of diagnoses, such as "Borderline Personality Disorder", I believe this one is dangerous. The affect of "faking good" used to resolve the symptoms of BPD is literally a person who convinces themselves they are good while their behaviors typically fail to follow. Really, many Axis II diagnosis is prone to thinking of themselves, as a general rule, as "good", which they relieve themselves of responsibility for how they treat others.
Mine truly is a layman's view. I think this is a good topic to discuss with the friends I have who actually work in the field of Psychology/Psychiatry. Interesting comments on this article. It does give me something to ponder.
When I was a kid, my mother was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, one of the most infamous iatrogenic psychiatric conditions. It was definitely the case that the longer she behaved in a certain way, the worse her "illness" became.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I think that, for my mother, these symptoms were a form of communication with her doctors. I believe she was actually mentally ill (thought not with multiple personalities), and the psychiatrists essentially told her, "people who are distressed do such and such and experience these things."
In our case, the DSM was like a Psychologeese-to-English dictionary. It was instructions in how to communicate mental distress in a way the doctors could understand.
But, once the symptoms were established they were hard habits to break, especially because they were extreme and led to loss of relationships, family problems, etc. So, they became real. And, the distress increased.
Role playing is really very powerful. Not only did my mother start speaking in baby voices, but the rest of the family played roles, for example the kids pretending to be parents to my mother's "child" alters. The doctors also played roles -- they affected thoughtful, Yoda-like, fakey personalities. We were all like actors in a bizarre and sick play. But it was real for a long time. The US Taxpayers footed the bill for my mother's treatment, which was at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more. So, role playing has real consequences.
Hello. I hope somebody can help me or point me in the right direction. When i was younger i experienced a psychosis ever since then i have been terrified of going into a psychosis again. I also carry alot of guilt from it around with me. Because of this psychosis happening so early on in my life i have been convincing myself ever since that i am somewhat "destined" to end up mentally ill. Lately i have been signed off work by the doctor with depression but i feel i am wholly responsible for this depression happening to me and that i have essentially convinced myself of being depressed when perhaps if i just tried a little harder i wouldn't be in this situation right now. Not only have i (do i) suffer from debilitating spells of depression i also have episodes of feeling very special and good about myself.This sounds like bipolar disorder but i really don't know. I am becoming ever so confused. Please help me, somebody.
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