Assumed shared belief about conspiracy theories in social networks protects paranoid individuals against distress.

ABSTRACT: Paranoia is the belief that others intend you harm. It is related to conspiracy theories, wherein those others represent an organized faction, coordinating the harm against self and others, and violating societal norms. Current psychological studies of paranoid conspiracy theorizing focus either on the individual or their broader social network. Likewise, theories of belief formation and updating often contain individual level processes as well as broader interpersonal and organizational factors. Here we examine paranoia and conspiracy theorizing in terms of individual behavioral predictors (performance on a probabilistic reversal learning task which assays belief updating) as well as social sensing: we ask participants to report the features of their social network, including whether thei

SUBMITTER: Suthaharan P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10100615 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature