To test a theory that selective attention to threatening stimuli induces paranoia, an attempt was made to manipulate attention to threatening and nonthreatening statements among college students and examine the effects on three indices of paranoia. Although manipulation checks indicated that attention was varied in the desired manner, hypothesized results in which selective attention to threatening statements would lead to greater scores on the paranoia measures were not found. However, a measure of field independence snowed a predicted positive correlation with the indices of paranoia for subjects who were manipulated to attend selectively to threatening statements. These same correlations tended to be negative or zero among subjects manipulated to attend to nonthreat and among unbiased attenders. These data suggest that susceptibility to development of paranoid behavior through selective attention to threat cues may increase as a function of field independence.A theory proposed by Ullmann and Krasner (1969) for the etiology of paranoia has found substantial empirical validation. This theory asserts that learned selective attention to threatening stimuli may be a causative agent in the development of persecutory delusions. Biased perceptual input due to the selective attention purportedly leads an individual to form conclusions about his environment which appear as delusions to others not engaging in the "abnormal" attentional behavior. The often noted normal' or even superior intelligence of the pure paranoiac allows him to form logically sound generalizations from the data he perceives, but the biased selection of data from which he is generalizing can only lead him to form conclusions about his environment which are false. Furthermore, his inability to find fault with his logic makes him rigid in his views.In support of this theory, a number of studies have found unusual attentional behavior in paranoid schizophrenics: They seemed
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