Symptoms of paranoia were found in 9.5% of a community sample of older adults in North Carolina. In cross-sectional analyses, these symptoms were associated most strongly with black race, lower income and education, less exercise, and more depressive symptoms. In longitudinal analysis, paranoid symptoms three years following initial interview were predicted by baseline paranoid symptoms, educat...

BACKGROUND Numerous studies have shown that paranoia is common in the nonclinical population; however, little research has examined whether nonclinical paranoid beliefs change over time, or considered potential reasons for change. AIMS The aim of the present study was therefore to examine naturalistic change in nonclinical paranoid experiences. METHOD 60 participants described an idiosyncra...

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 exa...

The Span of Apprehension task represents a putative cognitive vulnerability marker for schizophrenia. To investigate the nature of the scanning deficits on the Span of Apprehension shown by patients with paranoid schizophrenia a wide visual angle partial report version of the task was administered to 18 paranoid schizophrenics and 18 normal controls. An analysis of scan paths, based upon target...

OBJECTIVE A number of cognitive biases have been identified relevant to persecutory thought (e.g. exaggerated self-serving bias). Moreover, findings of increased depressed mood in conjunction with high levels of self-esteem have contributed to theories of persecutory ideation (e.g. Bentall, Kinderman, Kaney, 1994). Using a nonclinical sample, the present study sought to expand upon previous res...

Research into the nature of attributional reasoning in paranoia has for the most part been restricted to questionnaire-based approaches. This fails to address the issue of whether a distinctive attributional style underpins the everyday talk of paranoid individuals. This study aimed to investigate whether attributional models of paranoid delusions applied to spontaneous attributions generated i...