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

Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London

Paul E. Bebbington, MA, PhD, FRCP, FRCPsych and Benjamin Smith, BSc, DClinPsy

Department of Mental Health Sciences, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London

Rebecca Rollinson, BSc, DClinPsy and David Fowler, BSc, MSc

School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich

Elizabeth Kuipers, BSc, MSc, PhD

Department of Psychology

Katarzyna Ray, MA, MSc

Department of Biostatistics and Computing, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London

Graham Dunn, PhD

Biostatistics Group, Division of Epidemiology and Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Correspondence: Dr Daniel Freeman, Department of Psychology, PO Box 77, Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK. E-mail: D.Freeman{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk

Declaration of interest None.

Background Previous studies of paranoia have assessed only limited numbers of paranoid thoughts, and have notconsidered 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 avoidantcoping, less use of rational and detached coping, negative attitudes to emotional expression, submissive behaviours and lower social rank.

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

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