Abstract
The ability to attribute intentions to others is a hallmark of human social cognition but is altered in paranoia. Paranoia is the most common positive symptom of psychosis but is also present to varying degrees in the general population. Epidemiological models suggest that psychosis risk is associated with low social rank and minority status, but the causal effects of status and group affiliation on paranoid thinking remain unclear. We examined whether relative social status and perceived group affiliation, respectively, affect live paranoid thinking using two large-N (N = 2030), pre-registered experiments. Interacting with someone from a higher social rank or a political out-group led to an increase in paranoid attributions of harmful intent for ambiguous actions. Pre-existing paranoia predicted a general increase in harmful intent attribution, but there was no interaction with either type of social threat: highly paranoid people showed the same magnitude of increase as non-paranoid people, although from a higher baseline. We conclude social threat in the form of low social status and out-group status affects paranoid attributions, but ongoing paranoia represents a lowered threshold for detecting social threat rather than an impaired reactivity to it.
Highlights
Social threat detection mechanisms should be sensitive to the harms that can be imposed by conspecifics, including aggressive attacks, ostracism, social exclusion, reputation damage and other forms of harm that have potential negative consequences for reproductive success and/or survival
We distinguish between paranoid attributions, paranoid ideation and paranoid delusions, where delusions have a clear persecutory theme
A more recent study where participants were asked to compare themselves with profiles of high and low status people found a clear impact on perceived social rank but no effect on paranoid ideation [18]
Summary
Social threat detection mechanisms should be sensitive to the harms that can be imposed by conspecifics, including aggressive attacks, ostracism, social exclusion, reputation damage and other forms of harm that have potential negative consequences for reproductive success and/or survival. Low subjective social rank mediates the effect of childhood deprivation on later paranoid thinking [15] These findings suggest that interacting with partners who have a higher social rank or are from a social out-group will increase concerns about personal harm and these effects will be exaggerated among people who have higher levels of pre-existing paranoia. A more recent study where participants were asked to compare themselves with profiles of high and low status people found a clear impact on perceived social rank but no effect on paranoid ideation [18] Experimentally innovative, both studies used simulated social situations, potentially limiting their ability to engage the most relevant social cognitive processes that help us manage competition and cooperation with others in genuine social interactions [19,20]. We anticipated we would detect an interaction between paranoia and experimental social threat in the strength of harmful intent attributions
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