"to devalue disconfirmatory information"

Or they are rather busy with proving their point of view. That isn't like a real disconformation... Like when we have a discussion and I don't value your point of view because I dislike it. It's more like this person is trying to hold their worldview in order to not to destabilize their organisation. We got a saying in germany if someone is trying to hide something: You have dead bodies in your cellar... In english it's: Skeleton in the closet. What I often say when someone is troubled with their secrets being busy not showing it: This person is taking their own dead bodies as hostages. But when it comes to psychosis you might say that the dead bodies are taking the person as a hostage. Less discomfort... not really. It's more like a kind of stockholm syndrom: You learn to get used to your hostage takers and protect them. See? We all got those little hostage takers that harm us but never the less we protect them. Because beside hating being harmed we simply love to be right and furthermore consistent. Especially when perception is giving you good reasons to think you are right.

In practice we see that people who harbour delusions of possessing supernatural powers can live a very deprived life and are not bothered. I would say there is a reduction in experience of cognitive dissonance.

There is no systematic "reduction of cognitive dissonance" in psychosis as psychosis always has two aspects: positive and negative. Two aspects which vary according to the illogical nature of psychosis.

In positive one, psychotic highlights its own reality, his delirium that covers the true inter-subjective reality, which at times, reduced cognitive dissonance because psychotic neo-reality covers this dissonance.

But in negative one, psychotic faces unprotected contact with reality, which is unbearable and leads him/her to violently attack this reality. In such crisis situations, cognitive dissonance is at its peak.

And, I repeat, the two phases painfully alternate in the life of the psychotic, which is a fundamental characteristic of psychosis.

As psychopaths are, by definition, crazy, discussing their cognitive dissonance is irrelevant. I would shift the focus on the psychopaths and sociopaths : in their case, indeed, the cognitive dissonance is very reduced. As I met more sociopaths than I would have wished, I can say that from my own anamneseis. 

Classic psychology theory may be useful to consider here, albeit this is theoretical only and by no means implies empirical support.

According to Freud's ideas, psychosis emerges when a person's ego is unusually weak. With the ego operating on the reality principle, the unrealistic demands of the id clash with the superego's morality principle to conjure a lost sense of reality. Whether this leads to dissonance reduction is hard to discern from this perspective alone. Eric's comments seem to make sense when considering Freud's model.

The positive state of psychosis that a person may experience per Eric seems to fit well with the superego morality principle per Freudian theory. When a person is in this state, they may well harbor an unrealistic sense of self that masks inner needs and failings and instead provides the individual with a sense of excellence (e.g. a delusion of grandeur). In contrast, when the id tensions arise, the individual may well be within the negative state of psychosis that Eric discusses. Here, raw desires emerge and become acted upon, perhaps very impulsively. The direct interaction between these raw impulses and reality conjure tension, hence outbursts or other socially maladaptive behaviors that cause the person to be perceived by others in a highly negative way. This will yield dissonance as the person's overly positive self-view when in the positive (superego fueled) state of psychosis is now in conflict with the clash between the negative (id fueled) impulsive state that leads to social sanction.

I should note these are only ideas, but I thought that they may be worth sharing. Hopefully someone can provide some more information from empirical studies.

Dear all and especially Jay,

I am not an expert when it comes to Freud. But even Freud realized very fast the necessity for trust when it comes to the work between therapist and client. And we are not talking here about repression but fundamental basics between humans. Bem postulated in his self-perception theory that people might not only - when it comes to construction of identity - include 'internal knowledge' (knowlegde made up due to introspection) however they might also include own behaviour. Muhammed pointed out that ppl with psychosis do life a 'deprived life' (I would rather say they tend to life a more private life especially when not being able to find a suitable subculture). And I would furthermore say that many people with psychosis perceive themself as very different from others and their environment as hostile. Jay was asking for empirical studies. A classical empirical study was pointing out that in every person (no matter if suffering from psychosis or not) the feeling of voluntariness seems to be pretty essential if people are willing to tend to observe their own behaviour or not. However... what do you think how high the tendency might be to do so if your environment is perceived as hostile? So we have here people who are obviously not interested in other persons (or let's better say in the majority of society), not willing to attribute their own behaviour upon themself but rather tend to search for external factors. And last but not least they are more busy with their internal world, perceiving anything from outside (especially opinions which don't go well with personal opinions) as literally disturbing. But that doesn't mean they don't realize that others are different. They simply think they are more right and they don't want to listen what others got to say. But 1) if they don't perceive cognitive dissonance... why should they then avoid society? 2) If they left society why should they afterwards perceive cognitive dissonance if they are like happy with their situation? I have personaly never met someone with psychosis who was totaly happy being lonenly. On the contrary. Most are pretty depressed but always welcomed people they felt to be similar and opened up quickly.

In old-fashioned psychanalytic terms, there are two principles, the principle of pleasure and the principle of reality. In psychotics, the principle of reality is repressed, and, in some cases, it does not exist at all. 

In neurotics, the principle of pleasure overwhelms and fights the reality principle. In psychosis, there is no dialogue between the two. Take the paranoids : everything confirms their previous assumptions. They do not have any cognitive dissonance.

Well, Dan... I am not so sure about that. Most put a lot of afford into their explanations. A few years ago I found a board for people suffering from hearing voices. The explanations I read were partly pretty science fiction and really entertaining including a handful of different theories. Some were really detailed speaking of agents and technology and whatsoever. And people even took a lot of time to google for facts, discussing theories, developing deeper explanations. And you might say they were just misleaded scientists. Their subculture is like a negative technology cult. Indeed most of them were highly interested in sciences. However they overestimated the possibilities and rejected every idea of ethics when it came to "the system". And one motive repeating over and over: They didn't trust society. The board was splitted into different sections. One section was about theories giving people freedom to speak about what they think. Another section was about medication. Some users switched between the sections showing - depending in which section they wrote - different behavior. What I think is: Some took medication but it didn't work well for them and did not have the wished effects (make voices disappear). Obviously they couldn't be helped. So they went back to their own explanations. A very similar behavior one can observe when it comes to chronic illnesses: People form up so to say subcultures and try to become scientists by themself getting rid of their problem. Some are real experts knowing about papers not even doctors know about, up to date to the latest medical fashion. And you might say it's stupid. But I bet some people hearing voices know a lot more about receivers and antennas and all that technology stuff then we do. I once (before I started to study psychology) met a woman who was so to say an expert for all that technology stuff. She was even knowing a lot about quantum physics. And it was real fun talking with her because she was able to explain the most complicated ideas in an easy and understanding way. However yet she was pretty reluctant when it came to other fields of sciences. And from time to time she said she has cameras installed in her bath and the neighbours are laughing about her (paranoia). One day she told me about her real problem: Years ago she came home and her husband must have taken sleeping pills laying in the tub. He accidently fall asleep and drowned. She was still living in that apartment. Afterwards I think what she really feared was that her husband might try to get in contact with her. But she was unable to speak about it (beside the fact it didn't fit well into her scientific world view) and instead told those stories that the neighbours are observing her. Pretty sad story.

Several studies have suggested dysfunction in the thalamic reticular nucleus as part of the network generative of psychosis as this area determines internal from external origins of stimuli. Other studies have indicated that in auditory hallucinations there is evidence of dysfunction in the fiber tracts connecting the anterior and posterior portions of the left temporal lobe. Given the tight relationship between the hippocampi and the prefrontal cortices in schizophrenia, memories may readily become experientially contemporary.