Sex Differences in the Content of Persecutory Delusions: A Reflection of Hostile Threats in the Ancestral Environment?

Abstract

It is suggested that sex differentials in the probable nature of hostile threats from conspecifics in the human ancestral environment may be reflected in the content of persecutory delusions, especially the identity of persecutors and the nature of threats. If the necessary assumptions hold, men would tend to identify physically violent gangs of strangers as their persecutors, while women would tend to identify their persecutors as being familiar females whose persecution took the form of social exclusion and verbal aggression. Predictions concerning identity were confirmed in a sample of 11 female and 13 male cases identified by retrospective analysis of several hundred case note summaries: 73% of women identified familiar people as their persecutors while 85% of men identified strangers. Information was inadequate to evaluate the nature of persecutory threats. These preliminary findings invite replication and further exploration in larger, prospective, more extensive and more rigorously-controlled studies.