Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
or
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
, often to the point of
delusion
A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some o ...
and
irrationality
Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking, or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate use of reason, or through emotional distress or cognitive deficiency. ...
. Paranoid thinking typically includes
persecutory
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms ...
beliefs, or beliefs of
conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...
concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (i.e. ''"Everyone is out to get me"''). Paranoia is distinct from
phobia
A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avo ...
s, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame.
Making false accusations and the general distrust of other people also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, a paranoid person might believe an incident was intentional when most people would view it as an accident or coincidence. Paranoia is a central symptom of
psychosis
Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...
.
[Green, C., Freeman, D., Kuipers, E., Bebbington, P., Fowler, D., Dunn, G., & Garety, P. (2008). Measuring ideas of persecution and social reference: the Green et al. Paranoid Thought Scales (GPTS). ''Psychological Medicine, 38'', 101 - 111.]
Signs and symptoms
A common symptom of paranoia is the
attribution bias
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors.Kelley, H.H. (1967). Attribution theory in soci ...
. These individuals typically have a biased perception of reality, often exhibiting more hostile beliefs.
[Bentall and Taylor (2006), p. 289] A paranoid person may view someone else's accidental behavior as though it is with intent or threatening.
An investigation of a non-clinical paranoid population found that feeling powerless and depressed, isolating oneself, and relinquishing activities are characteristics that could be associated with those exhibiting more frequent paranoia.
Some scientists have created different subtypes for the various symptoms of paranoia including erotic, persecutory, litigious, and exalted.
Due to the suspicious and troublesome personality traits of paranoia, it is unlikely that someone with paranoia will thrive in interpersonal relationships. Most commonly paranoid individuals tend to be of a single status.
According to some research there is a hierarchy for paranoia. The least common types of paranoia at the very top of the hierarchy would be those involving more serious threats.
Social anxiety
Social anxiety is the anxiety and fear specifically linked to being in social settings (i.e., interacting with others). Some categories of disorders associated with social anxiety include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism spectrum disord ...
is at the bottom of this hierarchy as the most frequently exhibited level of paranoia.
Causes
Social and environmental
Social circumstances appear to be highly influential in paranoid beliefs. Based on data collected by means of a mental health survey distributed to residents of
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
Ciudad () is the Spanish Language, Spanish word for City
Ciudad may also refer to:
*La Ciudad (archaeological site), Hohokam ruins in Phoenix, Arizona
*La Ciudad, district of Durango City, Mexico
*''La ciudad'', novel by Mario Levrero 1970
*La Ciu ...
(in Mexico) and
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...
(in the United States), paranoid beliefs seem to be associated with feelings of powerlessness and
victimization
Victimisation ( or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology.
Peer victimisation
Peer victimisati ...
, enhanced by social situations. Potential causes of these effects included a sense of believing in external control, and mistrust which can be strengthened by lower socioeconomic status. Those living in a lower socioeconomic status may feel less in control of their own lives. In addition, this study explains that females have the tendency to believe in external control at a higher rate than males, potentially making females more susceptible to mistrust and the effects of socioeconomic status on paranoia.
Emanuel Messinger reports that surveys have revealed that paranoia can develop from parental relationships and untrustworthy environments. These environments could include being very disciplinary, stringent, and unstable. It was even noted that, "indulging and pampering (thereby impressing the child that they are something special and warrants special privileges)," can be contributing backgrounds.
[Deutsch and Fishman (1963), p. 1408] Experiences likely to enhance or manifest the symptoms of paranoia include increased rates of disappointment, stress, and a hopeless state of mind.
Discrimination has also been reported as a potential predictor of paranoid delusions. Such reports that paranoia seemed to appear more in older patients who had experienced higher levels of discrimination throughout their lives. In addition to this it has been noted that immigrants are quite susceptible to forms of psychosis. This could be due to the aforementioned effects of discriminatory events and humiliation.
Psychological
Many more mood-based symptoms, grandiosity and guilt, may underlie functional paranoia.
Colby (1981) defined ''paranoid cognition'' in terms of ''persecutory delusions and false beliefs whose propositional content clusters around ideas of being harassed, threatened, harmed, subjugated, persecuted, accused, mistreated, wronged, tormented, disparaged, vilified, and so on, by malevolent others, either specific individuals or groups'' (p. 518).
Three components of paranoid cognition have been identified by Robins & Post: ''a) suspicions without enough basis that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them; b) preoccupation with unjustified doubts about the loyalty, or trustworthiness, of friends or associates; c) reluctance to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against them'' (1997, p. 3).
Paranoid cognition has been conceptualized by clinical psychology almost exclusively in terms of psychodynamic constructs and dispositional variables. From this point of view, paranoid cognition is a manifestation of an intra-psychic conflict or disturbance. For instance, Colby (1981) suggested that the biases of blaming others for one's problems serve to alleviate the distress produced by the feeling of being humiliated, and helps to repudiate the belief that the self is to blame for such incompetence. This intra-psychic perspective emphasizes that the cause of paranoid cognitions is inside the head of the people (social perceiver), and dismisses the possibility that paranoid cognition may be related to the social context in which such cognitions are embedded. This point is extremely relevant because when origins of distrust and suspicion (two components of paranoid cognition) are studied many researchers have accentuated the importance of social interaction, particularly when social interaction has gone awry. Even more, a model of trust development pointed out that trust increases or decreases as a function of the cumulative history of interaction between two or more persons.
Another relevant difference can be discerned among "pathological and non-pathological forms of trust and distrust". According to Deutsch, the main difference is that non-pathological forms are flexible and responsive to changing circumstances. Pathological forms reflect exaggerated perceptual biases and judgmental predispositions that can arise and perpetuate them, are reflexively caused errors similar to a
self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. ...
.
It has been suggested that a "hierarchy" of paranoia exists, extending from mild social evaluative concerns, through ideas of social reference, to persecutory beliefs concerning mild, moderate, and severe threats.
[Freeman, D., Garety, P., Bebbington, P., Smith, B., Rollinson, R., Fowler, D., Kuipers, E., Ray, K., & Dunn, G. (2005). Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population. ''British Journal of Psychiatry 186'', 427 – 435.]
Physical
A paranoid reaction may be caused from a decline in brain circulation as a result of high blood pressure or hardening of the arterial walls.
[
Drug-induced paranoia, associated with ]cannabis
''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: ''Cannabis sativa'', '' C. indica'', and '' C. ruderalis''. Alternatively ...
, amphetamines
Substituted amphetamines are a class of compounds based upon the amphetamine structure; it includes all derivative compounds which are formed by replacing, or substituting, one or more hydrogen atoms in the amphetamine core structure with sub ...
, methamphetamine
Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamph ...
and similar stimulants
Stimulants (also often referred to as psychostimulants or colloquially as uppers) is an overarching term that covers many drugs including those that increase activity of the central nervous system and the body, drugs that are pleasurable and inv ...
has much in common with schizophrenic paranoia; the relationship has been under investigation since 2012. Drug-induced paranoia has a better prognosis than schizophrenic paranoia once the drug has been removed. For further information, see stimulant psychosis
Stimulant psychosis is a mental disorder characterized by psychotic symptoms (such as hallucinations, paranoid ideation, delusions, disorganized thinking, grossly disorganized behaviour) which involves and typically occurs following an overdose or ...
and substance-induced psychosis
Substance-induced psychosis (commonly known as toxic psychosis or drug-induced psychosis) is a form of psychosis that is attributed to substance use. It is a psychosis that results from the effects of chemicals or drugs, including those produced b ...
.
Based on data obtained by the Dutch NEMESIS project in 2005, there was an association between impaired hearing and the onset of symptoms of psychosis, which was based on a five-year follow up. Some older studies have actually declared that a state of paranoia can be produced in patients that were under a hypnotic state of deafness. This idea however generated much skepticism during its time.[Bentall and Taylor (2006), p.281]
Diagnosis
In the DSM-IV-TR
The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langua ...
, paranoia is diagnosed in the form of:
* Paranoid personality disorder
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental illness characterized by paranoid delusions, and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others. People with this personality disorder may be hypersensitive, easily in ...
()
* Paranoid schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. ...
(a subtype of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
) ()
* The persecutory
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms ...
type of delusional disorder
Delusional disorder is a mental illness in which a person has delusions, but with no accompanying prominent hallucinations, thought disorder, mood disorder, or significant flattening of affect.American Psychiatric Association. (2013). ''Diagnosti ...
, which is also called "querulous paranoia
In the legal profession and courts, a querulant (from the Latin ''querulus'' - "complaining") is a person who obsessively feels wronged, particularly about minor causes of action. In particular the term is used for those who repeatedly petition a ...
" when the focus is to remedy some injustice by legal action ()
According to clinical psychologist
Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...
P. J. McKenna, "As a noun, paranoia denotes a disorder which has been argued in and out of existence, and whose clinical features, course, boundaries, and virtually every other aspect of which is controversial. Employed as an adjective, paranoid has become attached to a diverse set of presentations, from paranoid schizophrenia, through paranoid depression, to paranoid personality—not to mention a motley collection of paranoid 'psychoses', 'reactions', and 'states'—and this is to restrict discussion to functional disorders. Even when abbreviated down to the prefix para-, the term crops up causing trouble as the contentious but stubbornly persistent concept of paraphrenia
Paraphrenia is a mental disorder characterized by an organized system of paranoid delusions with or without hallucinations (the positive symptoms of schizophrenia) and without deterioration of intellect or personality (its negative symptom).Almeida ...
".
At least 50% of the diagnosed cases of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
experience delusions of reference and delusions of persecution.[Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A., Korten, A., Ernberg, G., Anker, M., Cooper, JE., & Day, R. (1986). Early manifestations and first-contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. ''Psychological Medicine, 16'', 909 – 928.][Cutting, J. (1997). ''Principles of Psychopathology : Two Worlds–Two Minds–Two Hemispheres.'' Oxford University Press: Oxford.] Paranoia perceptions and behavior may be part of many mental illnesses, such as depression and dementia, but they are more prevalent in three mental disorders: paranoid schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. ...
, delusional disorder
Delusional disorder is a mental illness in which a person has delusions, but with no accompanying prominent hallucinations, thought disorder, mood disorder, or significant flattening of affect.American Psychiatric Association. (2013). ''Diagnosti ...
( persecutory type), and paranoid personality disorder
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental illness characterized by paranoid delusions, and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others. People with this personality disorder may be hypersensitive, easily in ...
.
Treatment
Paranoid delusions
A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some o ...
are often treated with antipsychotic medication
Antipsychotics, also known as neuroleptics, are a class of psychotropic medication primarily used to manage psychosis (including delusions, hallucinations, paranoia or disordered thought), principally in schizophrenia but also in a range of oth ...
, which exert a medium effect size. Cognitive behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (suc ...
(CBT) improves paranoid delusions relative to control conditions according to a meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
. A meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
of 43 studies reported that metacognitive training
Metacognitive training, (MCT), is an approach for treating the symptoms of psychosis in schizophrenia, especially delusions, which has been adapted for other disorders such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and borderline over the ye ...
(MCT) reduces (paranoid) delusions at a medium to large effect size relative to control conditions.
History
The word ''paranoia'' comes from the Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
παράνοια (''paranoia''), " madness", and that from παρά (''para''), "beside, by" and νόος (''noos''), "mind". The term was used to describe a mental illness in which a delusional belief is the sole or most prominent feature. In this definition, the belief does not have to be persecutory to be classified as paranoid, so any number of delusional beliefs can be classified as paranoia. For example, a person who has the sole delusional belief that they are an important religious figure would be classified by Kraepelin as having 'pure paranoia'. The word “paranoia” is associated from the Greek word “para-noeo”. Its meaning was "derangement", or "departure from the normal". However, the word was used strictly and other words were used such as "insanity" or "crazy", as these words were introduced by Aurelius Cornelius Celsus. The term “paranoia” first made an appearance during plays of Greek tragedians, and was also used by sufficient individuals such as Plato and Hippocrates. Nevertheless, the word “paranoia” was the equivalent of “delirium” or “high fever”. Eventually, the term made its way out of everyday language for two millennia. “Paranoia” was soon revived as it made an appearance in the writings of the nosologist
Nosology () is the branch of medical science that deals with the Medical classification, classification of diseases. Fully classifying a medical condition requires knowing its cause (and that there is only one cause), the effects it has on the b ...
s. It began to take appearance in France, with the writings of Rudolph August Vogel (1772) and Francois Boissier de Sauvage (1759).
According to Michael Phelan, Padraig Wright, and Julian Stern (2000), paranoia and paraphrenia
Paraphrenia is a mental disorder characterized by an organized system of paranoid delusions with or without hallucinations (the positive symptoms of schizophrenia) and without deterioration of intellect or personality (its negative symptom).Almeida ...
are debated entities that were detached from dementia praecox
Dementia praecox (meaning a "premature dementia" or "precocious madness") is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginnin ...
by Kraepelin, who explained paranoia as a continuous systematized delusion arising much later in life with no presence of either hallucinations or a deteriorating course, paraphrenia as an identical syndrome to paranoia but with hallucinations. Even at the present time, a delusion need not be suspicious or fearful to be classified as paranoid. A person might be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia without delusions of persecution, simply because their delusions refer mainly to themselves.
Relations to violence
It has generally been agreed upon that individuals with paranoid delusions will have the tendency to take action based on their beliefs. More research is needed on the particular types of actions that are pursued based on paranoid delusions. Some researchers have made attempts to distinguish the different variations of actions brought on as a result of delusions. Wessely et al. (1993) did just this by studying individuals with delusions of which more than half had reportedly taken action or behaved as a result of these delusions. However, the overall actions were not of a violent nature in most of the informants. The authors note that other studies such as one by Taylor (1985), have shown that violent behaviors were more common in certain types of paranoid individuals, mainly those considered to be offensive such as prisoners.
Other researchers have found associations between childhood abusive behaviors and the appearance of violent behaviors in psychotic individuals. This could be a result of their inability to cope with aggression as well as other people, especially when constantly attending to potential threats in their environment. The attention to threat itself has been proposed as one of the major contributors of violent actions in paranoid people, although there has been much deliberation about this as well. Other studies have shown that there may only be certain types of delusions that promote any violent behaviors, persecutory delusions seem to be one of these.
Having resentful emotions towards others and the inability to understand what other people are feeling seem to have an association with violence in paranoid individuals. This was based on a study of paranoid schizophrenics' (one of the common mental disorders that exhibit paranoid symptoms) theories of mind capabilities in relation to empathy. The results of this study revealed specifically that although the violent patients were more successful at the higher level theory of mind tasks, they were not as able to interpret others' emotions or claims.
Paranoid social cognition
Social psychological research has proposed a mild form of paranoid cognition, ''paranoid social cognition'', that has its origins in social determinants more than intra-psychic conflict.[Fenigstein, A., & Vanable, P. A. (1992). "Paranoia and self-consciousness." ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 62, 129 - 138.][Kramer, R. M. (1994). "The sinister attribution error: Origins and consequences of collective paranoia." ''Motivation and Emotion'', 18, 199 - 230.][Kramer, R. M. (1995a). "In dubious battle: Heightened accountability, dysphoric cognition, and self-defeating bargaining behavior." In R. M. Kramer & D. M. Messick (Eds.), ''Negotiation in its social context'' (pp. 95 – 120). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.][Kramer, R. M. (1995b). "Power, paranoia, and distrust in organizations: The distorted view from the top." ''Research on Negotiation in Organizations'', 5, 119 - 154.][Zimbardo, P. G., Andersen, S. M., & Kabat, L. G. (1981). "Induced hearing deficit generates experimental paranoia." ''Science'', 212, 1529 - 1531.] This perspective states that in milder forms, paranoid cognitions may be very common among normal individuals. For instance, it is not strange that people may exhibit in their daily life, self-centered thought such as they are being talked about, suspiciousness about others’ intentions, and assumptions of ill-will or hostility (i.e. people may feel as if everything is going against them). According to Kramer (1998), these milder forms of paranoid cognition may be considered as an adaptive response to cope with or make sense of a disturbing and threatening social environment.
Paranoid cognition captures the idea that dysphoric self-consciousness may be related with the position that people occupy within a social system. This self-consciousness conduces to a hypervigilant and ruminative mode to process social information that finally will stimulate a variety of paranoid-like forms of social misperception and misjudgment.[Kramer, R. M. (1998). "Revisiting the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam decisions twenty-five years later: How well has the group think hypothesis stood the test of time?" ''Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes'', 73, 236 - 271.] This model identifies four components that are essential to understanding paranoid social cognition: situational antecedents, dysphoric self-consciousness, hypervigilance and rumination, and judgmental biases.
Situational antecedents
Perceived social distinctiveness, perceived evaluative scrutiny and uncertainty about the social standing.
*Perceived social distinctiveness: According to the social identity theory
Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevance, relevant social group.
As originally formulated by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, John Turner in the 1970s ...
,[Turner, J. (1987). ''Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.] people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances.[Cota, A. A., & Dion, K. L. (1986). "Salience of gender and sex composition of ad-hoc groups: An experimental test of distinctiveness theory." ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 50, 770 - 776.][ Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain people's behavior when these attributes make them unique in a social group. This distinctive attribute may have influence not only in how people are perceived, but may also affect the way they perceive themselves.
*Perceived evaluative scrutiny: According to this model, dysphoric self-consciousness may increase when people feel under moderate or intensive evaluative social scrutiny such as when an asymmetric relationship is analyzed. For example, when asked about their relationships, doctoral students remembered events that they interpreted as significant to their degree of trust in their advisors when compared with their advisors. This suggests that students are more willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is motivated to pay attention to them. Also students spent more time ruminating about the behaviors, events, and their relationship in general.
*Uncertainty about social standing: The knowledge about the social standing is another factor that may induce paranoid social cognition. Many researchers have argued that experiencing uncertainty about a social position in a social system constitutes an adverse psychological state, one which people are highly motivated to reduce.
]
Dysphoric self-consciousness
Refers to an aversive form of heightened 'public self-consciousness' characterized by the feelings that one is under intensive evaluation or scrutiny
Scrutiny (French: ''scrutin''; Late Latin: ''scrutinium''; from ''scrutari'', meaning "those who search through piles of rubbish in the hope of finding something of value" and originally from the Latin "scruta," meaning "broken things, rags, or ...
.[ Becoming self-tormenting will increase the odds of interpreting others' behaviors in a self-referential way.
]
Hypervigilance and rumination
Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hypervigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hypervigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hypervigilance. Hypervigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hypervigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception. Rumination is another possible response to threatening social information. Rumination can be related to the paranoid social cognition because it can increase negative thinking about negative events, and evoke a pessimistic explanatory style.
Judgmental and cognitive biases
Three main judgmental consequences have been identified:[
*The sinister attribution error: This bias captures the tendency that social perceivers have to overattribute lack of trustworthiness to others.
*The overly personalistic construal of social interaction: Refers to the inclination that paranoid perceiver has to interpret others’ action in a disproportional self-referential way, increasing the belief that they are the target of others’ thoughts and actions. A special kind of bias in the biased punctuation of social interaction, which entail an overperception of causal linking among independent events.
*The exaggerated perception of conspiracy: Refers to the disposition that the paranoid perceiver has to overattribute social coherence and coordination to others’ actions.
Meta-analyses have confirmed that individuals with paranoia tend to jump to conclusions and are incorrigible in their judgements, even for delusion-neutral scenarios.
]
Research
A study suggests that combining cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with SlowMo, an app that helps notice their "unhelpful fast-thinking" might be more effective for treating paranoia in people with psychosis than CBT alone.
See also
* Anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
* Apophenia
Apophenia () is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term (German: ' from the Greek verb ''ἀποφαίνειν'' (apophaínein)) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the b ...
* Borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder (BPD), also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), is a personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted sense of self, and strong ...
* Case of Aimée
* Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
* Delusions of reference
Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the ...
* Distrust
Distrust is a formal way of not trusting any one party too much in a situation of grave risk or deep doubt. It is commonly expressed in civics as a division or balance of powers, or in politics as means of validating treaty terms. Systems based ...
* Fusion paranoia
* Ideas of reference
Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the ...
* Monomania
In 19th-century psychiatry, monomania (from Greek , one, and , meaning "madness" or "frenzy") was a form of partial insanity conceived as single psychological obsession in an otherwise sound mind.
Types
Monomania may refer to:
* De Clerambaul ...
* Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, a diminished ability or unwillingness to empathize with other ...
* Paranoid fiction
Paranoid fiction is a term sometimes used to describe works of literature that explore the subjective nature of reality and how it can be manipulated by forces in power. These forces can be external, such as a totalitarian government, or they can ...
* Paranoid personality disorder
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental illness characterized by paranoid delusions, and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others. People with this personality disorder may be hypersensitive, easily in ...
* Posttraumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on ...
* Pronoia
The ''pronoia'' (plural ''pronoiai''; Greek: πρόνοια, meaning "care" or "forethought," from πρό, "before," and νόος, "mind") was a system of granting dedicated streams of state income to individuals and institutions in the late Byz ...
* Querulant
In the legal profession and courts, a querulant (from the Latin ''querulus'' - "complaining") is a person who obsessively feels wronged, particularly about minor causes of action. In particular the term is used for those who repeatedly petition a ...
* Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
* Schizotypal personality disorder
Schizotypal personality disorder (STPD or SPD), also known as schizotypal disorder, is a mental and behavioral disorder. DSM classification describes the disorder specifically as a personality disorder characterized by thought disorder, parano ...
* '' Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia''
References
Sources
* American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
. ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langua ...
'' (DSM-IV-TR: Fourth edition Text Revision) (2000
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*American Psychiatric Association (1994). ''Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders'' (4th ed). Washington DC: Author.
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* Canneti, Elias (1962). ''Crowds and Power.'' Translated from the German by Carol Stewart. Gollancz, London. 1962.
*Colby, K. (1981). Modeling a paranoid mind. ''The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4'', 515 - 560.
*Deutsch, M. (1958). Trust and suspicion. ''Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2'', 265 - 279.
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* Farrell, John (2006). ''Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau''. Cornell University Press.
* Daniel Freeman (psychologist), Freeman, D. & Garety, P. A. (2004). ''Paranoia: The Psychology of Persecutory Delusions''. Hove: Psychology Press.
* Igmade (Stephan Trüby et al., eds.), ''5 Codes: Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of Terror'', Birkhäuser 2006.
* Kantor, Martin (2004). ''Understanding Paranoia: A Guide for Professionals, Families, and Sufferers''. Westport: Praeger Press.
* Munro, A. (1999). ''Delusional disorder''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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* Robins, R., & Post, J. (1997). ''Political paranoia: The politics of hatred''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
* Sant, P. (2005). ''Delusional disorder''. Punjab: Panjab University Chandigarh.
* Sims, A. (2002). ''Symptoms in the mind: An introduction to descriptive psychopathology (3rd edition)''. Edinburgh: Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
Science Ltd.
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