Paranoid people may be more likely to think others share their beliefs

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-06-19 09:01

New Zealand; International

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A small study suggests people who are paranoid may think other people have similar beliefs to them, according to UK and New Zealand scientists. They set up online games including 165 people whose paranoia levels were assessed based on their political, scientific, religious, paranormal and moral beliefs. Participants then played the games, which involved sharing money, in pairs, and each participant was asked to assess whether they thought their partner shared their beliefs. How paranoid people were, and the degree to which they felt their partner shared their beliefs, did not affect their performance in the games. But the researchers found people who scored highly for paranoia were more likely than those who were less paranoid to think their partner shared similar beliefs.

News release

From: The Royal Society

Social identification and paranoia

Paranoia is associated with variation in social behaviour, such as social avoidance, lower inclination to trust others or lower pro-sociality in economic games. Such variation may stem, in part, from a reduced tendency to socially identify with others, however previous studies report mixed results in this domain. In experimental conditions, we find that paranoia was in fact associated with higher social identification overall. Although this result requires further replication, it aligns with recent work suggesting that more paranoid individuals may harbour a higher tendency to perceive themselves as having similar beliefs to others.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Auckland, University College London, UK

Funder: A.G. was supported by the Royal Society. N.R. was supported by a Royal Society University Fellowship and the Leverhulme Trust.

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