Open AccessPsychosis proneness, loneliness, and hallucinations in nonclinical individuals
Author(s) -
Sarah Hope Lincoln,
Taylor Johnson,
Sarah Kim,
Emma R. Edenbaum,
Jill M. Hooley
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0251753
Subject(s) - schizotypy , loneliness , hallucinating , psychosis , psychology , auditory hallucination , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , clinical psychology , psychiatry , population , visual hallucination , medicine , environmental health , artificial intelligence , computer science
Hallucinations occur along a continuum of normal functioning. Investigating the factors related to this experience in nonclinical individuals may offer important information for understanding the etiology of hallucinations in psychiatric populations. In this study we test the relationship between psychosis proneness, loneliness, and auditory hallucinations in a nonclinical sample using the White Christmas paradigm. Seventy-six undergraduate students participated in this study. We found that slightly more than half of our participants endorsed a hallucinatory experience during the White Christmas paradigm. However, we did not observe a relationship between the number of hallucinatory experiences and schizotypy, propensity to hallucinate, or loneliness. Moreover, there were no differences on these measures between individuals who reported hearing a hallucination during the White Christmas paradigm relative to those who did not. Thus, there may be other contextual factors not investigated in this study that might clarify the mechanism by which auditory hallucinations are experienced in a nonclinical population.