Conjecturing Harmful Intent and Preemptive Strike in Paranoia.

Yutaka Horita

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.726081

Abstract

Paranoia depicts a belief of others having harmful intent. Research using economic games has exhibited the correlation between paranoia and the propensity to characterize ambiguous intentions as harmful. Using a non-clinical sample recruited online from the United States (N=290), we examined whether paranoid thoughts influence aggressive behavior against the subjective perception of harmful intent. We conducted a preemptive strike game wherein aggressive behavior was assumed to be guided by the fear of an opponent. The outcomes indicate that (1) individuals with high paranoia assume harmful intent of an opponent more than those with low paranoia (2) conjecturing an opponent’s harmful intent predicted an increase in the probability of a preemptive strike, and (3) paranoia did not have a statistically significant effect on encouraging a preemptive strike. Additionally, the exploratory analysis revealed that paranoia was related to participant’s aggressiveness and with suppositions of other’s self-interests and competitiveness. This study presents empirical evidence that paranoia is related to the perception of social threats in an uncertain situation. We discuss the possibility that paranoid ideation can promote or inhibit a preemptive strike.

Highlights

Paranoia, a common characteristic of psychosis, is defined as a belief that others have harmful intentions (Freeman and Garety, 2000)
(1) We investigated whether paranoia induces thoughts about others harboring harmful intents in ambiguous social interactions
Using the Preemptive Strike Game (PSG) among non-clinical samples, we examined whether paranoia impacts social behavior based on fear of harmful intent rather than ungenerous behavior driven by self-interest

Summary

Introduction

A common characteristic of psychosis, is defined as a belief that others have harmful intentions (Freeman and Garety, 2000). In which the causes of negative events were ambiguous, have shown that people with higher levels of paranoid ideation are likely to rate others’ intentions as hostile than those with lower levels (Combs et al, 2007). These findings indicate that paranoid ideation reflects a cognitive bias that others harbor hostile and malevolent intentions under ambiguous situations: called “sinister attribution error” (Kramer, 1994; Lopes et al, 2018)

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Results