Social Cognitive Biases Research Articles

Perceptions of hostility by persons with and without persecutory delusions

Introduction. Current models of paranoia propose that ambiguous situations, in which cues regarding the intentions of others are lacking, may be perceived as hostile by persons with persecutory delusions (PD). Thus, a social-cognitive bias for the perception of hostility may be present. In this study, the Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) was used to present situations that are ambiguous regarding the intentions of others. It was predicted that on the AIHQ, persons with PD would show greater levels of perceived hostility, blame, and aggression than both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric controls. Methods. The sample comprised 32 persons with PD, 28 persons without PD (psychiatric controls), and 50 healthy participants (nonpsychiatric controls). Participants completed the AIHQ along with measures of paranoia, attributional style, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and public self-consciousness. Results. As predicted, the group with PD showed greater perceptions of hostility, blame, and aggression scores for ambiguous situations on the AIHQ. Also, the AIHQ Hostility bias score was predictive of paranoid ideation. Conclusions. Persons with PD showed a social-cognitive bias for perceiving hostility in ambiguous situations. The bias appears to be specific as it was not found in the psychiatric or nonpsychiatric control groups. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Social anxiety and cognitive biases in non-referred children: The interaction of self-focused attention and threat interpretation biases

Cognitive-behavioral models of social phobia emphasize the combined effects of cognitive biases in the maintenance of the condition, and recent findings in adults implicate self-focused attention as one such bias. However, research examining self-focus in youth is limited. This investigation examined the causal role of self-focused attention on threat interpretation biases in a community sample of 175 socially anxious children. Self-focused attention was experimentally induced via a mirror manipulation procedure and self-focused attention was assessed before and after mirror exposure. Social interpretation biases were examined via an ambiguous stories task with half of the children completing the task in front of a mirror and the other half without a mirror. Social anxiety predicted self-focus and threat interpretation bias. The mirror manipulation did not have an effect on focus of attention or on threat interpretation bias, nor did it interact with social anxiety. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ): A new measure for evaluating hostile social-cognitive biases in paranoia

Introduction. This study reports on the development of a new measure of hostile social-cognitive biases for use in paranoia research, the Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ). The AIHQ is comprised of a variety of negative situations that differ in terms of intentionality. Items were developed to reflect causes that were ambiguous, intentional, and accidental in nature. Methods. Participants were 322 college students who completed the AIHQ along with measures of paranoia, hostility, attributional style, and psychosis proneness. The reliability and validity of the AIHQ was evaluated using both correlational and multiple regression methods. Results. The AIHQ had good levels of reliability (internal consistency and interrater reliability). The AIHQ was positively correlated with paranoia and hostility and was not correlated with measures of psychosis proneness, which supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale. In addition, the AIHQ predicted incremental variance in paranoia scores as compared to the attributional, hostility, and psychosis proneness measures. Ambiguous items showed the most consistent relationships with paranoia. Conclusions. The AIHQ appears to be a reliable and valid measure of hostile social cognitive biases in paranoia. Recommendations for using the AIHQ in the study of paranoia are discussed.

Are All 'Legal Dollars' Created Equal?

Law and economics scholars treat legal payments as fungible. To put things in the terminology often used by legal economists, legal payments are a price set for an activity. Just as a dollar paid for a tomato is identical to a dollar paid for a cucumber, so are a dollar paid as a pollution tax to the government and a dollar paid as compensation to the party injured by the pollution. Our goal in this study is to explore how different characteristics of legal payments affect the way in which people perceive them, and as a result the way they might behave. The three characteristics we focus on are: (a) the timing of the payment - we distinguish between payments that are made prior to committing the wrongful act and those made after the act has already been committed; (b) the identity of the party to which the payment is made - we distinguish between payments that function as compensation and are therefore paid to the injured party and those that are paid to a third party; and (c) whether or not the payment was probabilistic - we distinguish between payments that are certain and those that are not. We conjecture that social norms, cognitive biases, and other forces, could cause people to behave differently under legal rules that create similar economic consequences. Using a sample of 420 students, we employed a between-subject, three-factor design. Each factor was divided along two levels: timing of payment (ex-ante v. ex-post), identity of recipient (state vs. injured party), and the level of certainty (certain vs. probable). Participants were randomly divided amongst the six experimental conditions, and received a questionnaire with a hypothetical scenario that involved the behavior of an owner of a factory that creates a negative externality in its production process. Following the scenario, participants were asked about their likely behavior, as well as their social, legal and moral perceptions. Overall, we found that participants were more likely to produce when they paid the injured party, when they paid in advance and when the payment was not probabilistic.

Cognitive disturbance in borderline personality disorder: Phenomenologic, social cognitive, and neurocognitive findings

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious psychiatric syndrome that is most often associated with emotional instability and impulsive-aggression. However, BPD is also characterized by distinctive cognitive features. We review the empirical literature on four types of cognitive disturbance in BPD: 1) transient, quasi-psychotic cognition, 2) dissociation, 3) social cognitive biases, and 4) neurocognition. Finally, we describe a cognitive neuroscience model of BPD that can guide future empirical study of the mechanisms of the disorder and its psychosocial and pharmacologic treatment.

The effects of social injustice and inequality on children's moral judgments and behavior: Towards a theoretical model

Our goal in this paper is to examine the potential origins of children's understanding of morally relevant transgressions, with a particular focus on how children's perceptions of both proximal and distal unfairness might influence their social reasoning and behavior. A preliminary theoretical model is presented that addresses connections among aggressive children's social cognitive biases, their attachment histories, and their working models of societal justice and fairness. It is argued that difficulties in early parent–child interactions in combination with hostile larger social environments act to undermine emotional reciprocity, empathy, and concern for others in ways likely to promote proactive, uncaring forms of victimization and harm. Furthermore, it is proposed that given sufficiently toxic social experiences, some children will develop beliefs that life does not primarily revolve around caring or fairness, but around power and domination. Discussion focuses on the potential implications of these non-normative but coherent moral beliefs for theory and intervention.

Social cognitive bias and neurocognitive deficit in paranoid symptoms: evidence for an interaction effect and changes during treatment

Persistent paranoid symptoms are best understood as having multiple causal mechanisms. An enhanced multidimensional understanding of paranoia may result from the convergence of two distinct measurement paradigms, experimental psychopathology and social cognitive research. This study investigated the role of neurocognitive deficits and emotion misperception bias as they relate to paranoid symptoms at two different time points in a sample of individuals with severe mental illness (primarily schizophrenia spectrum disorders [ N=91]) undergoing intensive psychosocial rehabilitation. Before intensive rehabilitation (but after initial stabilization), paranoid symptoms were related to a tendency to misperceive emotion as disgust. The impact of this social cognitive bias was amplified by perseveration (as measured by the COGLAB Card Sorting Task). Perseverative errors were associated with paranoid symptoms at both time points. After 6 months of treatment, there were significant reductions in paranoid symptoms and perseverative errors but no significant changes in emotion misperception biases. This study is one of few to date to evaluate the contribution of both neurocognitive deficits and social cognitive biases to paranoid symptoms. The results demonstrate how social cognitive biases can interact with neurocognitive deficits in expression of paranoid symptoms, and how these relationships change during treatment.

Persecutory delusions and the determination of self-relevance: an fMRI investigation.

People with persecutory delusions regard ambiguous data in the social domain as self-relevant and selectively attend to threatening information. This study aimed to characterize these social cognitive biases in functional neuroanatomical terms. Eight schizophrenic patients with active persecutory delusions and eight matched normal controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while determining the self-relevance of ambiguous self-relevant or unambiguous other-relevant neutral and threatening statements. In determining self-relevance, the deluded subjects showed a marked absence of rostral-ventral anterior cingulate activation together with increased posterior cingulate gyrus activation in comparison to the normal subjects. The influence of threat on self-relevance determination did not yield statistically significant differences between deluded and normal subjects. Abnormalities of cingulate gyrus activation while determining self-relevance suggest impaired self-reflection in the persecutory deluded state. This may contribute to persecutory belief formation and maintenance.

Biases in the perceived prevalence and motives of severe acute respiratory syndrome prevention behaviors among Chinese high school students in Hong Kong.

In two studies conducted in Hong Kong during and immediately after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), participants displayed several social cognitive biases when they estimated the prevalence of and inferred the motives underlying SARS preventive behaviors. First, participants who practiced preventive behaviors (practicers) consistently estimated that more people practiced such behaviors than did non‐practicers (false consensus bias). Second, for some preventive behaviors, participants believed that their own behaviors were more motivated by prosocial concerns (relative to self‐interest) than were other practicers (pluralistic ignorance). Finally, non‐practicers underestimated the importance of prosocial concerns underlying some preventive behaviors (actor‐observer bias). We discussed the relevance of these social cognitive biases to health education and to Hong Kong people's psychological reactions to SARS.

The psychology behind the masks: Psychological responses to the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in different regions.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first reported in China, and spread to 29 regions, affecting over 8000 people worldwide. For the general public, the psychological impact of SARS may have been greater than the physical health danger of the disease. The present paper proposes the influence of psychological factors on people's cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses during the SARS outbreak. The various papers in this special issue of the Journal reveal how people have reacted during the SARS outbreak: People's general coping styles may be related to their health behavior during the outbreak. Cultural differences were evident in the perception of SARS, and individuals’ perceptual styles may have influenced their ability to cope with the outbreak. The way in which individuals coped with SARS‐related stressful events was different from their usual practices of managing daily stress. Individual differences in the adoption of preventive measures were related to the distinct susceptibility to several social‐cognitive biases.

Connectionist simulation of attitude learning: asymmetries in the acquisition of positive and negative evaluations.

Connectionist computer simulation was employed to explore the notion that, if attitudes guide approach and avoidance behaviors, false negative beliefs are likely to remain uncorrected for longer than false positive beliefs. In Study 1, the authors trained a three-layer neural network to discriminate "good" and "bad" inputs distributed across a two-dimensional space. "Full feedback" training, whereby connection weights were modified to reduce error after every trial, resulted in perfect discrimination. "Contingent feedback," whereby connection weights were only updated following outputs representing approach behavior, led to several false negative errors (good inputs misclassified as bad). In Study 2, the network was redesigned to distinguish a system for learning evaluations from a mechanism for selecting actions. Biasing action selection toward approach eliminated the asymmetry between learning of good and bad inputs under contingent feedback. Implications for various attitudinal phenomena and biases in social cognition are discussed.

“It Was Nothing”—Extending Evolutionary Models Of Altruism By Two Social Cognitive Biases In Judgments Of The Costs And Benefits Of Helping

Evolutionary theories of helping (inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism) require cognitive augmentation to account for the frequent helping of strangers and for the helper's willingness to incur immediate, certain costs for delayed, uncertain benefits. Both experiments reported here demonstrate two social cognitive biases in perceived cost to helper and benefit to recipient that promote helping, including helping strangers. Firstly, people show a counterintuitive self-effacing modesty bias, underestimating the value of help they provide relative to help received. This creates feelings of indebtedness that elicit and maintain helping, complementing a “cheater detection” mechanism that limits helping. A second cognitive bias is that as helper-recipient relationship becomes closer, opposing behavioral and cognitive effects appear. As closeness increases, more valuable help is exchanged; for the same behavior, judged benefit to recipient increases but, surprisingly, judged cost to helper decreases, a “labor of love” effect. These two nonobvious social cognitive biases encourage human helping behavior.

Understanding computer-related attitudes through an idiographic analysis of gender- and self-representations

We assessed girls’ and boys’ attitudes towards computers in general, and their use and enjoyment of computers for specific purposes. In addition, we obtained their self-evaluation against their ideal self, their prototype of a child who would be very good at computer-based tasks, and against their gender stereotypes (both own and other gender). The results showed no gender effects on the nomothetic global attitude scale. Significant gender effects appeared for the specific computer uses and the idiographic measures. Further, positive attitudes towards computers on the global nomothetic measure were related to less gendered idiographic perception of computer use. Confidence in global computer use was related to more gendered perception of computer use. The findings are discussed in terms of the complex ways in which social–cognitive biases are gendered, and the need to differentiate between different forms of computer use.

Social Cognitive Differences Between Aggressive–Rejected and Aggressive–Nonrejected Children

This study investigated differences in social cognitive processing between two subtypes of aggressive children: those rejected by their peers and those not rejected. Children in Grades 2–4 classified as aggressive–rejected (AR; n = 34), aggressive–nonrejected (AN; n = 55), or nonaggressive–nonrejected (NN; n = 64) on the basis of teacher ratings of aggression were administered the Social Cognitive Assessment Profile (SCAP). Descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA; aggressive vs. nonaggressive) replicated the previous finding that aggressive children have a broad range of social cognitive deficits and distortions and provided additional evidence of the criterion validity of SCAP scores. Three-group DDA (AR, AN, NN) indicated that AN children were more likely than AR children to believe that aggression leads to positive outcomes, and were more confident in their ability to use aggression toward a peer. The pattern of social cognitive differences between AR and AN children was similar to that typically found between proactively and reactively aggressive children. Aggressive children who are not also peer-rejected appear to have a distinct pattern of social cognitive biases that reflect antisocial beliefs likely to support the use of aggression to obtain desired goals. Effective interventions for these children may need to target underlying motivations as well as on-line processing skills.

Cognitive Theories of Delusion Formation: The Contribution of Visual Scanpath Research

Recent findings from visual scanpath research are considered in relation to cognitive theories of delusion formation. Contemporary theories converge in proposing that both perceptual and cognitive aberrations are crucial to the development of delusional beliefs (Garety & Freeman, 1999). Deluded individuals have reliably demonstrated attributional and probabilistic reasoning biases, manifesting as hasty decision making and an inclination to blame other people for negative experiences (Bentall, Kinderman, & Kaney, 1994; Garety & Hemsley, 1994). Deluded people have also displayed attentional preference for threat-related material and a ''negative'' world view (Kaney, Wolfenden, Dewey, & Bentall, 1992; Kaney, Bowen-Jones, Dewey, & Bentall, 1997). In combination, these biases might reflect a general tendency for deluded individuals to ''jump to conclusions'' when evaluating others' intentions (Garety & Freeman, 1999), influenced by the perception of threat and persecution everywhere (Kaney et al., 1997). This thesis would be consistent with reports of an inability of paranoid patients to correctly infer the intentions of others during ''theory of mind'' tasks but would not predict a total lack of mentalising ability as proposed by Frith (1992). In visual scanpath paradigms, deluded schizophrenics tend to display excessive staring behaviour and to avoid gazing at facial features when viewing human faces (Phillips & David, 1997, 1998; Streit, Wolwer, & Gaebel, 1997; Williams et al., 1999). These abnormal scanpath strategies could underlie aberrations in social reasoning (including misinterpretation of others' intentions) and data gathering exhibited by deluded individuals. Exploration of the relationship between visual scanpaths and biases in social cognition is therefore warranted.

Community violence exposure and children's social adjustment in the school peer group: The mediating roles of emotion regulation and social cognition.

This study reports a cross-sectional investigation of the relation between community violence exposure and peer group social maladjustment in 285 inner-city children in Grades 4-6 (mean age = 10.3 years). Children completed an inventory assessing exposure to community violence through witnessing and through direct victimization. A peer nomination inventory was then administered to assess social adjustment with peers (aggression, peer rejection, and bullying by peers). In addition, social-cognitive biases and emotion regulation capacities were examined as potential mediators. Analyses indicated that violent victimization was associated with negative social outcomes through the mediation of emotion dysregulation. Witnessed violence was linked only to aggressive behavior. Social information processing, rather than emotion dysregulation, appeared to mediate this association. These results demonstrate that violence exposure is linked to multiple levels of behavioral and social maladjustment and suggest that there are distinct patterns of risk associated with different forms of exposure.

Paranoid Thought and Schematic Processing

Paranoid Thought and Schematic ProcessingAllan FenigsteinAllan Fenigstein1 Kenyon CollegeSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:January 2011https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1997.16.1.77PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Fenigstein, AllanOnline publication date: 22 April 2020. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar2. Fenigstein, AllanOnline publication date: 5 December 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar3. Terror Management Theory and Psychological DisorderOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar4. How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theoriesOnline publication date: 30 May 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar5. Paranoia Symptoms Moderate the Impact of Emotional Context Processing on Community Functioning of Individuals with SchizophreniaOnline publication date: 26 April 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar6. Online publication date: Go to citation Crossref 7. Early relationships and paranoia: Qualitative investigation of childhood experiences associated with the development of persecutory delusionsOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar8. Abusive Supervision Through the Lens of Employee State ParanoiaOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar9. Emotional, cognitive and behavioral reactions to paranoid symptoms in clinical and nonclinical populationsOnline publication date: 20 June 2014. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar10. The Role of Predisposition to Hallucinations on Non-Clinical Paranoid vs. Socially Anxious Individuals after Hearing Negative Affective-Laden Sounds: An Experimental InvestigationOnline publication date: 13 September 2012. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar11. Depressive Primes Stimulate Initial Avoidance of Angry Faces: An Eye-Tracking Study of Paranoid IdeationOnline publication date: 7 September 2011. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar12. Theory of mind, facial recognition and emotional processing in schizophreniaOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar13. Teoría de la mente, reconocimiento facial y procesamiento emocional en la esquizofreniaOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar14. The Cognitive–Affective Processing System (CAPS) approach to personality and the concept of personality disorder: Integrating clinical and social-cognitive researchOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar15. On the Power of Music to Affect Intergroup RelationsOnline publication date: 1 March 2009. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar16. Cognitive and emotional differences between abusive and non-abusive fathersOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar17. Thought suppression and persecutory delusion-like beliefs in a nonclinical sampleOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar18. ReferencesOnline publication date: 9 May 2008. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar19. Subtypes of paranoia in a nonclinical sampleOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar20. Paranoid cognitions, failure, and focus of attention in college studentsOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar21. Relationships Between Hostility, Affective Ratings of Pictures, and State Affects During Task-Induced StressOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar22. Paranoia and emotion perception across the continuumOnline publication date: 24 December 2010. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar23. Perceived Racism as a Predictor of Paranoia Among African AmericansOnline publication date: 25 July 2016. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar24. Social cognitive bias and neurocognitive deficit in paranoid symptoms: evidence for an interaction effect and changes during treatmentOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar25. Implicit learning and non-clinical paranoia: does content matter?Online publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar26. Ethnic differences in subclinical paranoia: An expansion of norms of the Paranoia Scale.Online publication date: 1 January 2002. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar27. Cultural mistrust: An important psychological construct for diagnosis and treatment of African Americans.Online publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 16Issue 1Mar 1997 Information© 1997 Guilford Publications Inc.PDF download

A review of the literature on Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder children: Peer interactions and collaborative learning

ADHD children may have social skill deficits in at least three main areas: social communication, poor emotional regulation, and social-cognitive biases. They also have cognitive difficulties which have implications for their learning. Based on a review of the literature, it is argued that maladaptive classroom peer interactions for ADHD children may disadvantage their learning on collaborative tasks. Although the literature is sparse in the area of peer interactions and collaborative learning for ADHD children, some suggestions for practice and future research are suggested. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Peer Relationship Problems and Disruptive Behavior Disorders

About half of all children with attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have significant problems with their peer relationships. These social difficulties appear to be related to a high rate of intrusive behavior, deficits in conversation and reciprocity, social–cognitive biases, and poor emotional regulation. Social skills interventions have been advocated to teach children and adolescents how to interact more successfully with their peers. To date, few studies have systematically evaluated social skills interventions for children with ADHD. However, studies with children and adolescents who are disruptive have pointed to serious limitations in the generalization of treatment effects to the natural environment and questionable changes in peer relationships as a result of these treatments. These limitations and potentially useful adjunctive and alternative treatment strategies are discussed, including careful attention to setting events, the strategic use of peers, and the impact of medications on peer interactions.

Anchoring and publicity effects in clinical judgment.

Extrapolation from the literature of social-cognitive bias suggested testing anchoring and publicity effects in clinicians' (N = 46) successive judgments of detailed interview notes, five per case. If anchoring occurs, Ss' estimates of a client's pathology and prognosis at the final judgment point would be related differentially to the time (early/late) that they had received salient, pathognomonic case material. The publicity effect would be a tendency toward more conservative estimates on the part of Ss who are asked to justify their ratings in writing. Results among an experienced sample of clinicians indicated significant anchoring in one case but not the other, which suggests a clinical bias to disregard pathognomonic data about a client who is seen initially as less disturbed. Public justification was related neither to Ss' ratings, to reported confidence in their ratings, nor differentially by case. Implications and limitations are suggested.