How does the aberrant salience hypothesis of schizophrenia lead to symptoms people have when under the gang-stalking delusion. If you meet the same person several times a day, what is aberrantly salient about that?
I guess the question is how does aberrant salience explain the gangstalking phenomenon?
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Unless you are a hermit who never leaves their house, chances are pretty good that on the average day you will see at least dozens and perhaps hundreds of people and interact with at least a handful in some way.
For example, if you commute to work, and you encounter any traffic slowdowns, you will probably be surrounded by tens or hundreds of people also in their cars and for much of the time you’re in traffic you will probably be relatively close to 10 or so of the same cars because you’re all going the same way and you happened to encounter each other and get stuck in the same block of traffic.
When you get closer to work and you decide to stop in at a coffee shop to pick up your morning coffee and maybe a donut or bagel for breakfast, you’re probably not going to be the only person in the coffee shop. In addition to the employees, there will probably be other customers doing the same thing as you.
Let’s say your job is an office job with regular coworkers, so there’s not usually anyone new there. You do your job and go home.
If you got stuck in traffic going to work, you’re probably stuck in traffic again leaving work and again surrounded by dozens or hundreds of cars and traveling more or less in a pack with 10 or 15 of them for much of your trip.
You decide to stop off at the Chinese place near your house to pick up some dinner. Again, because this is a public restaurant at dinner time, there will be people there other than you and the employees. You pick up your Chinese and go home to eat.
If you have something like a regular, predictable schedule, chances are actually pretty good that when you get stuck in traffic every day, the cars that you get stuck in traffic with are going to be cars you’ve been stuck in traffic with before. That’s because those people also have a regular schedules and are also going about their ordinary day-to-day lives, but their trajectory happens to intersect with yours. That’s not unusual. There are people who live near you and people who work near you and people who travel the same roads as you.
Similarly, at the coffee shop, you probably get to the coffee shop at about the same time every day and so do the other people who are in the coffee shop at the same time. Again, they’re going about their ordinary lives and it just so happens that their story intersects with yours for a brief period of time. This is true again with the Chinese restaurant.
It’s even possible, and probably not that unlikely, that some of the same people you get stuck in traffic with, stop at the same coffee shop on their way into work, which is again because they happen to live and/or work near you and that coffee shop is convenient to them for the same reasons it’s convenient to you. And some of the people you get stuck in traffic with on the way home might stop off at the Chinese restaurant for, again, entirely normal and typical reasons that have nothing to do with you.
If you are an observant person, you might even notice that you see the same car with a distinctive license plate pretty much every morning on the road or at the coffee shop. It’s possible there are several cars that you notice who have pretty much the same schedule as you.
This is where aberrant salience comes in.
A psychologically healthy person would go through the reasoning I just went through, understanding that not everything in the world is about them. If they noticed that they happened to have the same schedule as these folks, they would realize that it’s because those people happened to live or work near them and enjoy the same coffee shop and are on roughly the same schedule. If they see somebody very frequently in the coffee shop, they might even introduce themselves.
A paranoid schizophrenic, on the other hand, would attach unreasonable and unjustified significance to the fact that they see the same car or the same person over and over again. They would not be convinced by the line of reasoning which is obvious to a psychologically healthy person. Instead, they believe that the people they see are there *because of the presence of the schizophrenic*. They attach aberrant (unusual/unjustified) salience (meaning/distinction/attention) to these coincidences. Instead, they concoct a narrative of their life which explains all of these completely normal and expected coincidences as part of a grand design to stalk them for some reason.
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