Skip to main content Accesibility Help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
Cancel
×
×
Home
  • Home
Article
  • Cited by 304
  • Cited by
    Crossref Citations
    Crossref logo
    This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
    Rose, Mariamne Ellett, Lyn Huddy, Vyv and Brown, Gary P. 2019. The simulation heuristic, paranoia, and social anxiety in a non-clinical sample. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Vol. 62, Issue. , p. 15.
    Ascone, Leonie Schlier, Björn Sundag, Johanna and Lincoln, Tania M. 2019. Pathways from insecure attachment dimensions to paranoia: The mediating role of hyperactivating emotion regulation versus blaming others. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice,
    Bortolon, Catherine Lopes, Bárbara Capdevielle, Delphine Macioce, Valéry and Raffard, Stéphane 2019. The roles of cognitive avoidance, rumination and negative affect in the association between abusive supervision in the workplace and non-clinical paranoia in a sample of workers working in France. Psychiatry Research, Vol. 271, Issue. , p. 581.
    Cowles, Megan and Hogg, Lorna 2019. An Experimental Investigation into the Effect of State-Anxiety on State-Paranoia in People Experiencing Psychosis. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Vol. 47, Issue. 1, p. 52.
    Saalfeld, Vanessa Ramadan, Zeina Bell, Vaughan and Raihani, Nichola J. 2018. Experimentally induced social threat increases paranoid thinking. Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 5, Issue. 8, p. 180569.
    Bird, Jessica C Evans, Robin Waite, Felicity Loe, Bao S and Freeman, Daniel 2018. Adolescent Paranoia: Prevalence, Structure, and Causal Mechanisms. Schizophrenia Bulletin,
    Lopes, Barbara C. Kamau, Caroline and Jaspal, Rusi 2018. Coping With Perceived Abusive Supervision: The Role of Paranoia. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, p. 154805181879582.
    Meisel, Susanne F. Garety, Philippa A. Stahl, Daniel and Valmaggia, Lucia R. 2018. Interpersonal processes in paranoia: a systematic review. Psychological Medicine, Vol. 48, Issue. 14, p. 2299.
    Imhoff, Roland and Lamberty, Pia 2018. How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 48, Issue. 7, p. 909.
    Amirpour, Leila Dadfar, Mahboubeh Heydari Charvadeh, Majid and Birashk, Behrooz 2018. Reliability, Validity, and Factorial Structure of the Farsi Version of the Paranoia Checklist With Iranian Students. SAGE Open, Vol. 8, Issue. 4, p. 215824401881712.
    Lincoln, Tania M Sundag, Johanna Schlier, Björn and Karow, Anne 2018. The Relevance of Emotion Regulation in Explaining Why Social Exclusion Triggers Paranoia in Individuals at Clinical High Risk of Psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin, Vol. 44, Issue. 4, p. 757.
    Carr, Sarah Christina Hardy, Amy and Fornells-Ambrojo, Miriam 2018. Relationship between attachment style and symptom severity across the psychosis spectrum: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, Vol. 59, Issue. , p. 145.
    Sellers, Rachel Emsley, Richard Wells, Adrian and Morrison, Anthony P. 2018. The role of cognitive and metacognitive factors in non-clinical paranoia and negative affect. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, Vol. 91, Issue. 2, p. 169.
    Whale, Katherine Green, Kathleen and Browne, Kevin 2018. Attachment style, psychotic phenomena and the relationship with aggression: an investigation in a general population sample. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research,
    Bell, Vaughan and O’Driscoll, Ciarán 2018. The network structure of paranoia in the general population. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, Vol. 53, Issue. 7, p. 737.
    Sundag, Johanna Ascone, Leonie and Lincoln, Tania M. 2018. The predictive value of early maladaptive schemas in paranoid responses to social stress. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Vol. 25, Issue. 1, p. 65.
    Seo, Jihyeon and Choi, Ji Young 2018. Social defeat as a mediator of the relationship between childhood trauma and paranoid ideation. Psychiatry Research, Vol. 260, Issue. , p. 48.
    Finn, Emily S. Corlett, Philip R. Chen, Gang Bandettini, Peter A. and Constable, R. Todd 2018. Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative. Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue. 1,
    Zangrilli, Alessia 2018. La bambina e le sue mappe. Commento al caso clinico di Anna. PSICOBIETTIVO, p. 119.
    Rüegg, Nina Moritz, Steffen Berger, Thomas Lüdtke, Thies and Westermann, Stefan 2018. An internet-based intervention for people with psychosis (EviBaS): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry, Vol. 18, Issue. 1,
    Download full list
    ×
  • Access

Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population

  • Daniel Freeman (a1), Philippa A. Garety (a1), Paul E. Bebbington (a2), Benjamin Smith (a2), Rebecca Rollinson (a3), David Fowler (a3), Elizabeth Kuipers (a4), Katarzyna Ray (a5) and Graham Dunn (a6)...
Abstract
Background

Previous studies of paranoia have assessed only limited numbers of paranoid thoughts, and have not considered the experience from a multidimensional perspective or examined the relationship between different suspicious thoughts.

Aims

To assess a wide range of paranoid thoughts multidimensionally and examine their distribution, to identify the associated coping strategies and to examine social–cognitive processes and paranoia.

Method

Six questionnaire assessments were completed by 1202 individuals using the internet.

Results

Paranoid thoughts occurred regularly in approximately a third of the group. Increasing endorsement of paranoid thoughts was characterised by the recruitment of rarer and odder ideas. Higher levels of paranoia were associated with emotional and avoidant coping, less use of rational and detached coping, negative attitudes to emotional expression, submissive behaviours and lower social rank.

Conclusions

Suspiciousness is common and there may be a hierarchical arrangement of such thoughts that builds on common emotional concerns.

  • View HTML
      • Send article to Kindle

      To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

      Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

      Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

      Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population
      Available formats
      ×
      Send article to Dropbox

      To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

      Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population
      Available formats
      ×
      Send article to Google Drive

      To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

      Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population
      Available formats
      ×
Copyright
COPYRIGHT: © 2005 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 
Corresponding author
Dr Daniel Freeman, Department of Psychology, PO Box 77, Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK. E-mail: D.Freeman@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Footnotes
Hide All

Declaration of interest

None.

Footnotes
References
Hide All
Allan, S. & Gilbert, P. (1997) Submissive behaviour and psychopathology. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 36, 467–488.
Birchwood, M., Meaden, A., Trower, P., et al (2000) The power and omnipotence of voices: subordination and entrapment by voices and significant others. Psychological Medicine, 30, 337–344.
Birnbaum, M. H. (2001) Introduction to Behavioural Research on the Internet. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Chadwick, P. D. J., Birchwood, M. J. & Trower, P. (1996) Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia. Chichester: Wiley
Fenigstein, A. & Vanable, P. A. (1992) Paranoia and self-consciousness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 129–138.
Folkman, S. & Lazarus, R. S. (1980) An analysis of coping in a middle-aged community sample. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 21, 219–239.
Fowler, D., Garety, P. A. & Kuipers, L. (1995) Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Psychosis: Theory and Practice. Chichester: Wiley.
Freeman, D. & Garety, P. A. (2004) Paranoia: The Psychology of Persecutory Delusions. Hove: Psychology Press.
Freeman, D., Garety, P. A., Kuipers, E., et al (2002) A cognitive model of persecutory delusions. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41, 331–347.
Freeman, D., Slater, M., Bebbington, P. E., et al (2003) Can virtual reality be used to investigate persecutory ideation? Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 191, 509–514.
Freeman, D., Garety, P. A., Fowler, D., et al (2004) Why do people with delusions fail to choose more realistic explanations for their experiences? An empirical investigation. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 671–680.
Garety, P. A., Kuipers, E., Fowler, D., et al (2001) A cognitive model of the positive symptoms of psychosis. Psychological Medicine, 31, 189–195.
Gilbert, P. & Allan, S. (1994) Assertiveness, submissive behaviour and social comparison. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 33, 295–306.
Johns, L. C., Cannon, M., Singleton, N., et al (2004) Prevalence and correlates of self-reported psychotic symptoms in the British population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 185, 298–305.
Joseph, S., Yule, W., Williams, R., et al (1994) Correlates of post-traumatic stress at 30 months: the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 32, 521–524.
Joseph, S., Dalgleish, T., Williams, R., et al (1997) Attitudes towards emotional expression and post-traumatic stress in survivors of the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 36, 133–138.
Melzer, D., Tom, B. D. M., Brugha, T. S., et al (2002) Common mental disorder symptom counts in populations: are there distinct case groups above epidemiological cut-offs? Psychological Medicine, 32, 1195–1201.
Rachman, S. & de Silva, P. (1978) Abnormal and normal obsessions. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 16, 233–248.
Roger, D., Jarvis, G. & Najarian, B. (1993) Detachment and coping: the construction and validation of a new sca e for measuring coping strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 15, 619–626.
SPSS (2001) SPSS Base 11.0.1 User's Guide. Chicago, IL: SPSS.
Sturt, E. (1981) Hierarchical patterns in the distribution of psychiatric symptoms. Psychological Medicine, 11, 783–794.
Van Os, J. & Verdoux, H. (2003) Diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia: categories versus dimensions, distributions versus disease. In The Epidemiology of Schizophrenia (eds Murray, R. M., Jones, P. B., Susser, E., et al), pp. 364–410. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

The British Journal of Psychiatry
  • ISSN: 0007-1250
  • EISSN: 1472-1465
  • URL: /core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *

CAPTCHA *

Skip to the audio challenge
×

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between <date>. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed

  • Cited by 304
  • Cited by
    Crossref Citations
    Crossref logo
    This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
    Rose, Mariamne Ellett, Lyn Huddy, Vyv and Brown, Gary P. 2019. The simulation heuristic, paranoia, and social anxiety in a non-clinical sample. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Vol. 62, Issue. , p. 15.
    Ascone, Leonie Schlier, Björn Sundag, Johanna and Lincoln, Tania M. 2019. Pathways from insecure attachment dimensions to paranoia: The mediating role of hyperactivating emotion regulation versus blaming others. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice,
    Bortolon, Catherine Lopes, Bárbara Capdevielle, Delphine Macioce, Valéry and Raffard, Stéphane 2019. The roles of cognitive avoidance, rumination and negative affect in the association between abusive supervision in the workplace and non-clinical paranoia in a sample of workers working in France. Psychiatry Research, Vol. 271, Issue. , p. 581.
    Cowles, Megan and Hogg, Lorna 2019. An Experimental Investigation into the Effect of State-Anxiety on State-Paranoia in People Experiencing Psychosis. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Vol. 47, Issue. 1, p. 52.
    Saalfeld, Vanessa Ramadan, Zeina Bell, Vaughan and Raihani, Nichola J. 2018. Experimentally induced social threat increases paranoid thinking. Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 5, Issue. 8, p. 180569.
    Bird, Jessica C Evans, Robin Waite, Felicity Loe, Bao S and Freeman, Daniel 2018. Adolescent Paranoia: Prevalence, Structure, and Causal Mechanisms. Schizophrenia Bulletin,
    Lopes, Barbara C. Kamau, Caroline and Jaspal, Rusi 2018. Coping With Perceived Abusive Supervision: The Role of Paranoia. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, p. 154805181879582.
    Meisel, Susanne F. Garety, Philippa A. Stahl, Daniel and Valmaggia, Lucia R. 2018. Interpersonal processes in paranoia: a systematic review. Psychological Medicine, Vol. 48, Issue. 14, p. 2299.
    Imhoff, Roland and Lamberty, Pia 2018. How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 48, Issue. 7, p. 909.
    Amirpour, Leila Dadfar, Mahboubeh Heydari Charvadeh, Majid and Birashk, Behrooz 2018. Reliability, Validity, and Factorial Structure of the Farsi Version of the Paranoia Checklist With Iranian Students. SAGE Open, Vol. 8, Issue. 4, p. 215824401881712.
    Lincoln, Tania M Sundag, Johanna Schlier, Björn and Karow, Anne 2018. The Relevance of Emotion Regulation in Explaining Why Social Exclusion Triggers Paranoia in Individuals at Clinical High Risk of Psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin, Vol. 44, Issue. 4, p. 757.
    Carr, Sarah Christina Hardy, Amy and Fornells-Ambrojo, Miriam 2018. Relationship between attachment style and symptom severity across the psychosis spectrum: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, Vol. 59, Issue. , p. 145.
    Sellers, Rachel Emsley, Richard Wells, Adrian and Morrison, Anthony P. 2018. The role of cognitive and metacognitive factors in non-clinical paranoia and negative affect. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, Vol. 91, Issue. 2, p. 169.
    Whale, Katherine Green, Kathleen and Browne, Kevin 2018. Attachment style, psychotic phenomena and the relationship with aggression: an investigation in a general population sample. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research,
    Bell, Vaughan and O’Driscoll, Ciarán 2018. The network structure of paranoia in the general population. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, Vol. 53, Issue. 7, p. 737.
    Sundag, Johanna Ascone, Leonie and Lincoln, Tania M. 2018. The predictive value of early maladaptive schemas in paranoid responses to social stress. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Vol. 25, Issue. 1, p. 65.
    Seo, Jihyeon and Choi, Ji Young 2018. Social defeat as a mediator of the relationship between childhood trauma and paranoid ideation. Psychiatry Research, Vol. 260, Issue. , p. 48.
    Finn, Emily S. Corlett, Philip R. Chen, Gang Bandettini, Peter A. and Constable, R. Todd 2018. Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative. Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue. 1,
    Zangrilli, Alessia 2018. La bambina e le sue mappe. Commento al caso clinico di Anna. PSICOBIETTIVO, p. 119.
    Rüegg, Nina Moritz, Steffen Berger, Thomas Lüdtke, Thies and Westermann, Stefan 2018. An internet-based intervention for people with psychosis (EviBaS): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry, Vol. 18, Issue. 1,
    Download full list
    ×
  • Access

Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population

  • Daniel Freeman (a1), Philippa A. Garety (a1), Paul E. Bebbington (a2), Benjamin Smith (a2), Rebecca Rollinson (a3), David Fowler (a3), Elizabeth Kuipers (a4), Katarzyna Ray (a5) and Graham Dunn (a6)...
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.

×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *

Cancel
Confirm
×