Psychological processes and paranoia: implications for forensic behavioural science

Abstract

Paranoid delusions have recently become the focus of empirical research. In this article, we review studies of the psychological mechanisms that might be involved in paranoid thinking and discuss their implications for forensic behaviour science. Paranoia has not been consistently associated with any specific neuropsychological abnormality. However, evidence supports three broad types of mechanism that might be involved in delusional thinking in general and paranoia in particular: anomalous perceptual experiences, abnormal reasoning, and motivational factors. There is some evidence that paranoia may be associated with hearing loss, and good evidence that paranoid patients attend excessively to threatening information. Although general reasoning ability seems to be unaffected, there is strong evidence that a jumping- to-conclusions style of reasoning about data is implicated in delusions in general, but less consistent evidence specifically linking paranoia to impaired theory of mind. Finally, there appears to be a strong association between paranoia and negative self-esteem, and some evidence that attempts to protect self-esteem by attributing negative events to external causes are implicated. Some of these processes have recently been implicated in violent behaviour, and they therefore have the potential to explain the apparent association between paranoid delusions and offending.

A Review of Self-esteem of the Hearing Impaired Football Players

“…In fact; it is reported that those who are subjected to hearing loss in old age suffer from paranoid psychosis more than the normal population [35] [36]. Most of the widespread epidemiological studies undertaken lately support -especially-the correlation between audio visual perception disorders and psychiatric disorders [7] [19] [45].…”

Hétköznapi gyanakvás: életünk a paranoia

“…h) Az önértékelés csökkenése [14] szintén lényeges lehet, a társas életben a biztos tájékozódást vesztő, saját értékeit minimalizáló, az értéktelenség hamis érzésével vergődő és aggódó/szorongó lélek jó táptalaj a tévesz més gondolkodás kifejlődésére. Az önértékelés/önbe csülés megromlása (az önbecsülés önbecsmérlésbe át csapása) depresszióban különösen gyakori.…”

Are you looking at me? Understanding and managing paranoid personality disorder

“…Genetic studies have similarly been unable to disentangle delusional disorder from paranoid personality disorder (Winokur 1985), although it now appears that both disorders are probably genetically distinct from schizophrenia (Asarnow 2001;Cardno 2006). This diagnostic problem can be viewed as part of a wider debate about the boundaries of psychosis, and the resurgent idea that psychotic symptoms are best conceptualised as dimensional phenomena on continua with normal experiences (Claridge 1997;van Os 2000;Bentall 2006). In his classic paper, Strauss (1969) suggested four criteria for determining the threshold into clinical psychotic illness: degree of conviction regarding the objective reality • Others (Claridge 1997) have emphasised that the key distinction is not simply the level of symptoms but rather their effect on day-to-day coping abilities, i.e.…”

“…People with high levels of paranoid thinking have an externalising, personal attributional bias: a tendency to explain negative events in their life by blaming others rather than reflecting on their own potential contribution to circumstances (Bentall 2001(Bentall , 2006. The normal self-serving bias, whereby negative events are attributed to external circumstances, is exaggerated and distorted (Campbell 1999), being skewed towards other people and their supposed malevolent intent.…”

“…There is a corresponding tendency to underuse contextual information when explaining negative outcomes (Gilbert 1988). Bentall (2006) suggests that this attributional bias is a psychological defence against underlying low self-esteem, activated when there is perceived threat to the individual's positive view of themselves. Although there is some evidence that self-esteem is generally low in individuals with paranoia in both clinical (Garety 1999) and nonclinical samples (Martin 2001;Ellett 2003;Combs 2004), the relationship between self-esteem, paranoid thinking and behaviour is complex.…”