Narrative Rewriting and Reward Feedback

Narrative Rewriting and Reward Feedback is a hypothesis model developed by András Kevereschán to describe how an initially conscious or partly conscious distortion of context may gradually become a narrative experienced as subjectively true. The model places particular emphasis on narrative recirculation, the Illusory Truth Effect, and a dynamic continuum of awareness. It proposes that awareness may decrease not only across a single causal progression—from selective distortion toward increasingly consolidated subjective certainty—but may also deepen across repeated internal reruns of the same narrative. Thus, the transition from consciously or partly consciously altered context to subjectively experienced truth is not assumed to occur at one fixed point. An altered narrative may be repeatedly replayed because it reduces aversive states such as cognitive dissonance, self-image threat, shame, or responsibility burden, while also providing reinforcing outcomes such as justification, moral superiority, social validation, control, or restored coherence. These opposing motivational poles may keep the narrative circulating. With each replay, justificatory inferences may be reactivated, while repetition, familiarity, and increased accessibility may further strengthen the narrative’s subjective truth value through the Illusory Truth Effect. The model organizes this process around interacting motivational, affective, justificatory, epistemic, social, and reward-related mechanisms. Its central proposed constructs include Narrative Pruning, the Retaliatory Decision, the Deservingness Judgment, the Justification–Truth Bridge, the Narrative Dominance Reward Loop, Social Validation Feedback, Mental Replay / Narrative Recirculation, the Illusory Truth Effect, and Retrospective Justification of the Original Act. A central hypothesis is that subjective justification may acquire epistemic weight: “what I feel / say / do is justified” → “if it is justified, it is just” → “if it is just, this is true” → the conclusion experienced as true feeds back into the narrative that supports it. The Justification–Truth Bridge is therefore not treated as a single crossing. It may be activated at different points during one causal sequence and may reactivate during later mental replay. As the narrative recirculates, awareness of the original selection, omission, or distortion may decrease or fluctuate, while subjective certainty may increase. The model does not assume that this process is strictly linear, irreversible, or identical in every case. The model also incorporates schema-therapy and developmental-psychology hypotheses concerning vulnerability, affective weighting, and self-image protection. DARVO is used only as an external descriptive comparison in one illustrative example. The model is intended as a conceptual and research-generating framework, not as a diagnostic instrument or a validated unified neurobiological mechanism.