Social identification and paranoia

Abstract

Paranoia is associated with variation in social behaviour, such as lower inclination to trust others or to behave generously in economic game settings. Such variation may stem, in part, from a reduced tendency to socially identify with others, although previous studies have reported mixed results. We tested whether paranoia involves altered social identification in a pre-registered online study investigating the relationship between a measure of social identification, paranoia, and social behaviours in economic games. We successfully manipulated social identification, but paranoia was associated with slightly increased social identification overall. Neither paranoia nor social identification predicted behaviour in the economic games, and there was no interaction between paranoia and social identification regarding trusting and cooperative behaviours. Our results converge with recent work suggesting that more paranoid individuals may harbour a higher tendency to perceive themselves as having similar beliefs to others. We discuss some key areas for future research to progress understanding in this area.