Moral Emotions and Social Economic Games in Paranoia

Paranoid thinking and perceived competitive intention

Paranoid thinking, that others are hostile, can be seen even in the general population. Paranoia is considered the expectation that others are competitors who aim to maximize the differences in payoffs rather than maximize their own payoffs. This study examined whether paranoia reflects the irrational belief that others have a competitive intention and is associated with avoiding perceived competition. We recruited 884 US residents via the Internet and conducted a modified Dictator Game, in which monetary allocation was carried out between the Dictator and the Recipient. The Dictator chooses either fair or competitive allocation while selecting the competitive allocation is irrelevant to increasing the Dictator's payoffs. The Recipient decides whether to accept the Dictator's decision or receive sure but low rewards. We found that Recipients with high-level paranoid thinking expected their opponent to select competitive allocation more than those with low levels, even when selecting it was costly for Dictators. Paranoid thinking was not associated with selecting sure rewards or competitive allocations. The results suggest that paranoia reflects the belief that others have a competitive intention but is not related to avoidance behavior against perceived threats and unilateral attacks.

Conjecturing Harmful Intent and Preemptive Strike in Paranoia

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.

Serotonin depletion amplifies distinct human social emotions as a function of individual differences in personality

Serotonin is involved in a wide range of mental capacities essential for navigating the social world, including emotion and impulse control. Much recent work on serotonin and social functioning has focused on decision-making. Here we investigated the influence of serotonin on human emotional reactions to social conflict. We used a novel computerised task that required mentally simulating social situations involving unjust harm and found that depleting the serotonin precursor tryptophan-in a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled design-enhanced emotional responses to the scenarios in a large sample of healthy volunteers (n = 73), and interacted with individual differences in trait personality to produce distinctive human emotions. Whereas guilt was preferentially elevated in highly empathic participants, annoyance was potentiated in those high in trait psychopathy, with medium to large effect sizes. Our findings show how individual differences in personality, when combined with fluctuations of serotonin, may produce diverse emotional phenotypes. This has implications for understanding vulnerability to psychopathology, determining who may be more sensitive to serotonin-modulating treatments, and casts new light on the functions of serotonin in emotional processing.

Biased interpretation in paranoia and its modification

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Cognitive models of psychosis implicate interpretation biases as one of the mechanisms involved in the formation and maintenance of symptoms. First we measured the strength of association between interpretation biases and psychosis-relevant traits. Next we manipulated these biases and quantified the effects of doing so on psychosis-relevant outcomes.

METHODS

Experiment 1 used two measures of interpretation bias in a healthy sample (n = 70). Experiment 2 used a novel cognitive bias modification procedure (CMB-pa) in individuals with moderate trait paranoia (n = 60).

RESULTS

Experiment 1 revealed that over a third of the variance in interpretation bias could be explained by the combined effect of trait measures of paranoia/psychosis. In Experiment 2, CBM-pa produced training-congruent changes in the interpretation of new ambiguous information and influenced the interpretation, attribution and distress associated with a real-life social event.

LIMITATIONS

The potentially confounding effects of elevated anxiety and depression on interpretation bias and the restricted range of outcome measures to assess the wider effects of CBM-pa.

CONCLUSIONS

These studies are consistent with interpretation biases contributing to the maintenance of paranoia. CBM-pa could next be adapted and evaluated to test its efficacy as a therapeutic intervention.

Derationalizing Delusions

Because of the traditional conceptualization of delusion as “irrational belief,” cognitive models of delusions largely focus on impairments to domain-general reasoning. Nevertheless, current rationality-impairment models do not account for the fact that (a) equivalently irrational beliefs can be induced through adaptive social cognitive processes, reflecting social integration rather than impairment; (b) delusions are overwhelmingly socially themed; and (c) delusions show a reduced sensitivity to social context both in terms of how they are shaped and how they are communicated. Consequently, we argue that models of delusions need to include alteration to coalitional cognition—processes involved in affiliation, group perception, and the strategic management of relationships. This approach has the advantage of better accounting for both content (social themes) and form (fixity) of delusion. It is also supported by the established role of mesolimbic dopamine in both delusions and social organization and the ongoing reconceptualization of belief as serving a social organizational function.

Paranoia, sensitization and social inference: findings from two large-scale, multi-round behavioural experiments

The sensitization model suggests that paranoia is explained by over-sensitivity to social threat. However, this has been difficult to test experimentally. We report two preregistered social interaction studies that tested (i) whether paranoia predicted overall attribution and peak attribution of harmful intent and (ii) whether anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity and worry predicted the attribution of harmful intent. In Study 1, we recruited a large general population sample (N = 987) who serially interacted with other participants in multi-round dictator games and matched to fair, partially fair or unfair partners. Participants rated attributions of harmful intent and self-interest after each interaction. In Study 2 (N = 1011), a new sample of participants completed the same procedure and additionally completed measures of anxiety, worry and interpersonal sensitivity. As predicted, prior paranoid ideation was associated with higher and faster overall harmful intent attributions, whereas attributions of self-interest were unaffected, supporting the sensitization model. Contrary to predictions, neither worry, interpersonal sensitivity nor anxiety was associated with harmful intent attributions. In a third exploratory internal meta-analysis, we combined datasets to examine the effect of paranoia on trial-by-trial attributional changes when playing fair and unfair dictators. Paranoia was associated with a greater reduction in harmful intent attributions when playing a fair but not unfair dictator, suggesting that paranoia may also exaggerate the volatility of beliefs about the harmful intent of others.

Psychometric Properties and Validation of the EMOTICOM Test Battery in a Healthy Danish Population

Disruptions in hot cognition, i.e., the processing of emotionally salient information, are prevalent in most neuropsychiatric disorders and constitute a potential treatment target. EMOTICOM is the first comprehensive neuropsychological test battery developed specifically to assess hot cognition. The aim of the study was to validate and establish a Danish language version and reference data for the EMOTICOM test battery. To evaluate the psychometric properties of 11 EMOTICOM tasks, we collected data from 100 healthy Danish participants (50 males, 50 females) including retest data from 49 participants. We assessed test-retest reliability, floor and ceiling effects, task-intercorrelations, and correlations between task performance and relevant demographic and descriptive factors. We found that test-retest reliability varied from poor to excellent while some tasks exhibited floor or ceiling effects. Intercorrelations among EMOTICOM task outcomes were low, indicating that the tasks capture different cognitive constructs. EMOTICOM task performance was largely independent of age, sex, education, and IQ as well as current mood, personality, and self-reported motivation and diligence during task completion. Overall, many of the EMOTICOM tasks were found to be useful and objective measures of hot cognition although select tasks may benefit from modifications to avoid floor and ceiling effects in healthy individuals.