Associations between hoarding, hyperactive agency detection, and schizotypy

There is mixed evidence regarding the association between hoarding behaviours and psychosis. We, therefore, aimed to investigate the association between hoarding severity and schizotypy in two non-clinical samples large enough to estimate associations with reasonably high levels of precision. In addition, we aimed to examine whether individual differences in hyperactive agency detection mediated any associations that were found between hoarding severity and schizotypy. We conducted two online studies (Study 1 N = 212; Study 2 N = 261), with participants completing self-report measures of schizotypy, hoarding severity, and negative affect, as well as a measure of hyperactive agency detection, using a Heider-Simmel animation. In both studies, there were significant, positive associations between hoarding severity and schizotypy and between hoarding severity and hyperactive agency detection. However, while individual differences in hyperactive agency detection partially mediated the association between schizotypy and hoarding severity in Study 2, this was not the case in Study 1. These findings provide further evidence of an association between hoarding and schizotypy, but the role hyperactive agency detection plays in the development of hoarding remains unclear. Open materials, open data, and pre-registered predictions/analysis plans are available at doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/kw5xa.