Cognition

Cognition is a concept in Persona 5 that is an important theme in the game, and can apply to people, locations and objects. Similar existences are hinted at earlier in the Persona series.
==Appearances==
*Persona 5 / Royal
*Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
*Persona 5 Strikers
*Persona 5 Tactica
*Persona 5: The Phantom X
==Profile==
Cognition refers to the concept of humans perceiving the world and viewing what they see as reality. When enough humans collectively perceive something that concept becomes "real," influencing both the world and themselves. This concept is strongly hinted to be related to previous situations seen in Persona games.
It also refers to when a person is interpreted by other people or society, given form based on those perceptions. The apparent appearance may be identical, but the personality or the physical capabilities can be vastly different than the original. A cognition is not to be confused with a Shadow Self, though one's Shadow Self can also take on properties based on other people's interpretation of the person, and some cognitions such as Sphinx Wakaba and Doe take traits similar to their host's Shadow Selves. Furthermore, some cognitions can also be fused with Shadow Selves or are sometimes even Shadows themselves, such as the nobles in Shido's Palace or the carnivorous dinosaurs in Junessic Land.
===Persona 2===
A precursor to cognition concept is introduced in the Persona 2 duology, where several entities are created seemingly from nothing by the power of widespread rumors about them, such as the entirety of the Last Battalion. This includes "false" versions of existing people, such as the ghost of Akinari Kashihara in the clock tower of Seven Sisters High School and the ghost of the (still living) Maya Amano encountered in the caves of Mt. Iwato.
The party's own Shadow Selves are likewise "created" through rumors spread about the party by the Masked Circle, though these copies are shown to be genuine reflections of their counterparts.
The idea of rumors becoming reality is itself a reflection of the power of Cognition, where enough people believing something will make it real. Therefore, Nyarlathotep, the granter of such abilities, is able to control the cognition of people to alter reality itself to his favor. Unlike the Metaverse, which needed to be merged with reality to have any effect outside behavior and mental function, the alterations in cognition caused by the rumors directly and wildly affect reality from the very beginning. This means that, at least immediately, the rumors being spread around Sumaru City are significantly more dangerous than the Metaverse.
===Persona 4===
In Persona 4, the Shadow Selves of the main cast likewise take on elements of cognition, with their appearances and mannerisms being exaggerated or distorted based not on the person's actual personality, but how other people watching the Midnight Channel interpret them. The TV World is also strongly implied to be the product of Inaba's cognition as well.
===Persona 5 / Royal===
The Palaces and the Metaverse are the product of the cognition of individuals and society, with those reflecting how they perceive the world. Yaldabaoth controls society from the shadows using the masses' cognition in Mementos. Once he sets his plans in motion he merges Mementos with reality, using the cognition of the public to deny the existence of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. The masses' cognition begins to erase them, plummeting the already low support rate of the Phantom Thieves in the Phantom Aficionado Website to exactly 0%. The protagonist finds himself in the Velvet Room where "Igor" tells Caroline and Justine to execute him, until they awaken as well and he fuses them into Lavenza, in which the two face Yaldabaoth. He offers the protagonist a chance to join him, and if he refuses, Yaldabaoth allows them to remain in existence for his own amusement and it is revealed that those who are banished by the masses' cognition are actually imprisoned in special cells inside the Velvet Room, which has been merged with Mementos after its infiltration and capture. The masses' cognition is later used against Yaldabaoth in the final battle, where their cheers heal and protect the Thieves from the Rays of Control and the reverse manipulation also awakens Arsène into Satanael, who kills him with a shell imbued with the combined might of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Morgana is a special cognition formed as a last ditch effort to lead the Trickster on his journey to stop Yaldabaoth. With Yaldabaoth's defeat, Morgana fades away with the Metaverse. However, Morgana manages to return in his normal cat form and still retains his ability to talk to the Phantom Thieves, likely as a result of them keeping him in their cognitions.
In Persona 5 Royal, Takuto Maruki's Persona is so powerful that it can control and manipulate cognition under its own power and initially, Maruki was only capable of subconsciously activating the ability, dubbed as "actualization". The first product of such cognition warping (bar the initial event with his ex-fiance Rumi) is what appears to be "Kasumi Yoshizawa," or actually Sumire Yoshizawa, whom Maruki neutralized her survivor's guilt of losing her beloved sibling, Kasumi Yoshizawa, because she couldn't live with herself otherwise. When the Day of Reckoning arrived and Yaldabaoth's plan unraveled in full force, contact with the Metaverse allowed his Persona to fully awaken. With this power, starting from the moment of Yaldabaoth's defeated and beginning in earnest on the 1st of January, Maruki was capable of warping reality, using this cognitive power within Mementos to create real changes to reality by changing the entire cognition of the world, as well as of individuals such as "Kasumi." 
Cognitions appear in the Palaces of their respective hosts. They are the embodiment of what the hosts perceive them in reality. A cognitive existence can be "killed" in the Palace with no consequence to its origin in reality, but can appear again if its creator desires it like with the case of cognitive Ann. For the most part, cognitions are passive and do nothing when they encounter the Phantom Thieves. However, several cognitions have attacked the Phantom Thieves during their Palace heists.
*Kamoshida's Palace:
**Princess Ann and other female students: Obedient sex slaves for Suguru Kamoshida. Most besides Ann have a pink tinge to them and look identical, suggesting that Kamoshida has forced himself onto so many girls that the majority of his victims have blurred together in his mind.
**Jailed and painfully trained male students: Dispensable volleyball club members for Kamoshida's glory.
**Cognitive Mishima and Shiho: These act as a part of Shadow Kamoshida's Gold Medal Spike in Persona 5 Royal; Cognitive Mishima appears like his regular self while Shiho appears in a playboy bunny outfit. Mishima is reduced into an obedient and cowardly slave while Shiho largely acts similar to "Princess Ann." The cognitive Shiho can be targeted in order to stop the second golden medal spike, although both will run away and never get summoned again once both attempts fail to kill the protagonist.
*Madarame's Palace:
**Portraits of Ichiryusai Madarame's disciples: Madarame's profitable and expendable artistic sources of his success.
**Guests: The devoted fanbase to Madarame's stolen glory.
*Kaneshiro's Palace:
**ATM humans: Cash dispensers for Junya Kaneshiro's own greed.
**Kaneshiro's Henchmen: Enforcers of Kaneshiro's crime empire. These cognitive doubles appear to be indistinguishable from their real world selves, perhaps indicating that Kaneshiro does not have a dehumanizing opinion of them.
*Futaba's Palace:
**Sphinx: The spiteful spirit of Wakaba Isshiki who represents Futaba Sakura's false and imposed belief that her mother hated her. She is the first cognition to actively attack the Phantom Thieves, and is only defeated after Futaba realizes she is a false memory and rejects her as such.
*Okumura's Palace:
**Sugimura: Kunikazu Okumura's stepping stone to political power by sacrificing Haru's happiness. The personality of cognitive Sugimura does not deviate much from his real self, suggesting that Okumura is well aware of Sugimura's true colors as an abusive man.
**Corporobos: Dispensable labors devoid of emotion and loyal to Kunikazu's empire. Kunikazu's main line of defense that fights the Phantom Thieves.
** Cognitive Haru: Appears only in Persona 5 Royal. An alien, obedient version of Okumura's "beloved" daughter, whom he ungratefully tried to sacrifice as a stepping stone to his political victory. While initially appearing similar to Okumura's Shadow skin tone wise, and is used as a medium for Okumura to cast debuffs, after all of the robots are defeated it is sent into the battlefield and becomes into a clearly robotic form, in which she is ordered to self-destruct like the other robots.
*Niijima's Palace:
**Various casino patrons: The cognition of how Sae sees those who enter the courthouse. They are ignorant of their losses and the problems around them. As Sae does not have a dehumanizing cognition of defendants, they are indistinguishable from actual people.
**Phantom Thief Joker and Guard: A cognitive replica of the protagonist and a Guard watching over him used to trick Akechi into assassinating a fake.
**Cognitive Goro Akechi: Mentioned only. While the protagonist was in custody, the other Phantom Thieves ambushed and hid this cognitive replica after Makoto realized the real Akechi could encounter the doppelgänger and realize he was in the Metaverse.
*Shido's Palace:
**VIPs: Five of Masayoshi Shido's most powerful, wealthy, and/or loyal allies in his conspiracy. All of them are so similar to their real selves that they have fused with the actual Shadow Selves of the people they represent. They all must be fought to obtain letters of recommendation and enter the treasure room.
**Cognitive Goro Akechi: Shido's obedient and disposable puppet and hitman in the Metaverse.
**Ship passengers: The wealthy and powerful people Shido personally knows and actually cares about. It's remarked several times that they seem almost real rather than automatons.
*Maruki's Palace (Royal only):
** Copies of "Kasumi's" "dead sister" and the real Kasumi: Before meeting Maruki personally in the new Palace for the first time, these images of Kasumi and her "dead sister" would be displayed in order to warn her and other intruders of the painful reality that they are living in. If "Kasumi" views these images, it will cause an adverse reaction to her. Once he is identified as the palace ruler, he no longer displays these images to the Thieves.
**Cognitive Patients: Maruki's very own view of humanity; these people to take his therapy and slowly enter a degraded mental state, eventually blindly frolicking in the Garden of Eden, completely ignorant to their surroundings.
*Velvet Room:
**Members of the Phantom Thieves: Cognitive copies that assist the protagonist in Challenge Battles in Persona 5 Royal.
**Persona 3 protagonist and Persona 4 protagonist: Cognitive copies for the purpose of battling them. Available as DLC challenge enemies in Persona 5 Royal.
===Persona 5 Tactica===
The rulers of each Kingdom are cognitive beings erected upon by Salmael to destroy Toshiro Kasukabe's will, only for Erina to manifest subconsciously to fight them to a stalemate. This led to the deity directly dragging Toshiro into the world he created to assassinate him in order to keep the tranquility of the public. All of the Kingdom rulers are based on real people Toshiro knows and fears with their unpleasant qualities exaggerated to the point of outright tyranny. The only exception is Shadow Toshiro, the true ruler of Nakabachi Kingdom, who is directly Toshiro's Shadow Self. Each of the Kingdoms are named after and publicly ruled by a cognitive version of a person who had a profound negative influence on Toshiro's persona life, and are followed by Legionnaires, which are Shadows remade by Salmael into beings similar to cognitive beings who personify their control over his environment. Erina is the cognitive version of Eri Natsuhara combined with positive elements of Toshiro's Shadow (his suppressed idealism), and is followed by the Rebel Corps, who like her are embodiments of Toshiro's latent refusal to give up on his moral ideals and admiration for the Phantom Thieves being able to defeat Masayoshi Shido. 
===Persona 5 Strikers===
Shadow Akane Hasegawa summons cognitive copies of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts to attack. These cognitions represent her delusional beliefs that the Phantom Thieves will crush all authority instead of assisting them and her wrath against the Phantom thieves assisting Zenkichi Hasegawa and the Police in general.
Lavenza might issue quests to defeat cognitive versions of Alice Hiiragi, Ango Natsume, Mariko Hyodo, Akira Konoe and the False God Demiurge during certain intervals of the game. All of these copies are stronger compared to when they are first fought. After reloading a cleared save file, Lavenza will request the party to rematch these copies one more time at even higher stats compared to the previous rematch. Defeating them will trigger a quest to defeat The Reaper in the Okinawa Jail that will unlock New Game Plus and the Risky difficulty.
===Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth===
The Yasogami High School in the alternate reality is actually created by Zen in Rei's image. The place eventually became a festival version filled with cognitive beings taking the appearance of Yasogami High students as well as guardians in four labyrinths created in Rei's image, such as her love of storybooks which created the Queen of Hearts, her dream of marriage which created the Merciful Clergyman. Presumably, when the Investigation Team mentioned "Group Date Café", the second labyrinth was turned into a love-filled labyrinth by Rei.
===Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth===
The main inhabitants of the movie world are actually cognitive existences of people in Hikari's past, in which most of them being those of her past tormentors who emotionally abused her because she was different from other people. Unlike the cognitions in Persona 5, as these cognitions are simply actors given shape by the Persona user's cognition, they can take the form of anyone that the Persona users know and Hikari doesn't as long as they fit in the role.
Their behavior can deviate drastically from the Persona characters that they take the form of, as they inherit their behavior from how Hikari perceives the person they are based on, and their dialogue use the exact phrasing as those people during their corresponding incidents. Just like the movie Labyrinths in the game, they do not exist until Doe invoked them into the movies by overwriting the original movies with Hikari's suppressed memories.
Various cognitions such as the Carnivorous Dinosaurs of Junessic Land are also Shadows due to being F.O.Es or can transform into Shadows to attack if provoked such as the policemen in Kamoshidaman.
Unlike the uniformly hostile guardians under Chronos' control in Persona Q, these cognitions have varying roles that can arrange from being antagonists that oppress the other inhabitants in the movie and act against the party to assisting them in changing the movie's ending. Those who assist the party invariably use Hikari as a base and those who are against the party are always based on her tormentors. The only exception is Doe, who both assists the party and Hikari in escaping the Cinema and goes against them by attacking the party and trying to keep Hikari from moving away from her past.
*Kamoshidaman:
**Kamoshidaman: The untouchable superhero who is the absolute authority of Kamocity. Based on Hikari's primary school teacher who was viewed as a just authority who can do nothing wrong. Her teacher's cognition took Kamoshida's form as he is the first thing that the Phantom Thieves think of about corrupt authorities.
**Super Kamoshidaman: Kamoshidaman's true form that appears as a monstrous rabbit-like creature, representing Hikari's resentment of being falsely accused of poisoning the class rabbit by her teacher.
**Chicken Kid and Buster Girl: Defenders of Kamocity patrolling it from all intruders. They represent the kids who caretake the class rabbit alongside Hikari and turned on her when she said the teacher was wrong.
**Citizens of Kamocity: Undying support and idolizers of Kamoshidaman's absolute justice. Based on the students of Hikari's primary school who unconditionally supported their teacher when she was falsely accused of poisoning the class rabbit. Policemen cognitions can transform into Shadows and attack the party.
*Junessic Land:
**Herbivore Dinosaurs: The weak inhabitants of Junessic Land who act as a hivemind without any actual regard for the benefits for themselves or others. Based on Hikari's secondary school friends who outcast her because of their selfish self-preservative policies.
**Yosukesaurus: The outcast dinosaur of Junessic Land. A cognitive copy of Hikari's secondary school self who took Yosuke's form as he is the first thing that comes into the Investigation Team's mind when it comes to an outcast friend.
**Carnivorous Dinosaurs: The carnivorous dinosaurs that terrorize Junessic Land and are based on the girls that bullied Hikari in her secondary school. Despite they directly threaten the Herbivore Dinosaurs, the latter does not make any attempts to oppose the former. They are unique as they are actually F.O.Es (and are thus shadows) taking cognitive traits.
*A.I.G.I.S:
**Mother Computer and Overseer: The absolute AI governor of A.I.G.I.S who thinks uniqueness and personality is a dangerous crime, and seeks to remove anyone possessing them. Based on Hikari's relatives who denied her unique future wishes. They took Shuji Ikutsuki's form as he is the first thing that crosses S.E.E.S' mind when it comes to non-authoritative parental figures.
**UIY-2249/Ribbon: The self-loathing unique robot of A.I.G.I.S who constantly wishes for herself to be scrapped and destroyed. A cognitive copy of Hikari's high school self who took this form as Aigis is the first thing that comes into S.E.E.S' mind when it comes to a unique friend. Just like cognitive Sugimura, Ribbon's personality and behavior is near-identical to the source of the cognition she is based on.
*???:
**Hikari's past selves: Various stages of Hikari's past who were dehumanized due to being different from others, devoid of any other influence that causes them to resemble other people.
**Hikari's tormentors: Copies of people who emotionally abused or manipulated Hikari in the past because she spoke or acted against them, although the last one that took the form of her father is merely a false recollection. They often use the same phrases as the respective movie characters they represent. They transform into Shadows that attack the party if provoked and denied.
**Doe: The strange creature that broadcasts the films in the movie world. He is based on Hikari's conflicting paranoia and fond memories of her father, embodying Hikari's denied desire for identity and her desire to avoid any more pain. He works both towards helping Hikari come to terms with her past and keeping her trapped in it. After being defeated, he transforms into a Cognition of Hikari's father as he truly was and helps her escape the cinema.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*The concept of Cognition and Morgana's speech after the final battle strongly suggest Cognition is Persona's equivalent to Observation.
Category:Persona 5
Category:Persona 5 Strikers
Category:Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
Category:Persona 5: The Phantom X