Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Social Roots of Delusions

The Social Roots of Delusions

Miyazono, Kengo
Williams, Daniel
Wilkinson, Sam

Paperback

Series: International Perspectives in Philosophy & Psychiatry

PhilosophyGeneral PsychologyMental Health

PREORDER - Expected ship date November 4, 2026

ISBN10: 0192874179
ISBN13: 9780192874177
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Nov 4 2026
Pages: 320
Language: English
The Social Roots of Delusions argues that human sociality is essential for understanding what delusions are and how they form.

Humans are cooperative and cultural animals, radically dependent on others for survival and for the knowledge we use to navigate our world. That world includes complex systems of norms, reputation, gossip, surveillance, and partner choice, along with high-stakes competition for prestige and power among individuals and shifting coalitions.

Against this background, Williams, Wilkinson, and Miyazono offer a social account of delusions in two senses. First, they rethink what it means to be delusional by situating delusion attribution within norm-governed practices of epistemic gatekeeping. In this context, calling a belief delusional expresses bafflement and marks its adherents as rational lost causes, people who seem unreachable by ordinary communication, persuasion, and argument.

Second, they show how social forces help produce and sustain delusions, including both clinical delusions and collective delusions. Popular delusions arise from socially motivated cognition interacting with complex social practices that reward conformity, supply rationalisations, and shield groups from counterevidence. Clinical delusions, by contrast, are often maintained when isolation and mistrust cut people off from the shared knowledge and corrective testimony that ordinarily stabilise belief. Drawing on philosophy, cognitive science, and psychiatry, the book connects individual psychopathology with collective irrationality through a single social lens.

Also in

General Psychology

View All