An evolutionary perspective on paranoia

Abstract

Although paranoia is the most commonly presenting symptom of psychosis, paranoid thoughts occur frequently in the general population and range widely in severity, from mild socio-evaluative concerns to frank delusions about the harmful intentions of others. Furthermore, paranoia commonly appears after a surprisingly diverse range of difficulties including trauma, brain injury, sleep deprivation, drug use, and psychiatric and neurological disorder. Evolutionary accounts of paranoia have been proposed before but have largely focused on paranoia as a misplaced threat response. Although social threat is clearly a key component, the experience of paranoia is markedly more complex than these accounts would lead us to believe: paranoia can involve multiple alterations in the perception of the social environment, the identification of specific but seemingly arbitrary groups as the source of persecution, and extended beliefs about conspiracy and complex coordination between the perceived persecutors. Here, we argue for an evolutionary approach to paranoia that more fully accounts for its complex social phenomenology and considers how it can be understood in light of our evolved social cognition. More specifically, in terms of the ability to form coalitions and coordinate between groups in situations of cooperation and competition.

Dopamine manipulations modulate paranoid social inferences in healthy people

“…Importantly, our findings were not attributable to subjective mood, beliefs in general, nor scepticism about whether participants were playing real partners. These findings are consistent with imaging and physiological evidence (Baez-Mendoza et al, 2013), and evolutionary accounts (Raihani & Bell, 2019), that identify a key role for dopamine in social inference. Future research should aim to use live, social process-oriented tasks in combination with imaging and pharmacology to better understand the role of dopamine in social attributions and its interaction with psychosocial factors (such as social stress) which are known to increase risk for psychosis.…”

“…Indeed, it has been previously suggested that the integration of information in the striatum is critical for social interactions and relationships (Baez-Mendoza & Schultz, 2013). Specifically, we suggest that dopamine may modulate the representation of threat during social interactions, as social threat is an evolutionarily important focus of attention (Raihani & Bell, 2019). Evidence from mice, for example, suggests a specific subcortical dopaminergic circuit for environmental threat detection and avoidance (Menegas et al, 2018).…”

Social reward, punishment, and prosociality in paranoia.

“…Although paranoia traditionally referred to delusional paranoia, a broader spectrum of paranoid concerns also occurs in a range of psychiatric syndromes and throughout the general population where it can encompass perceptions of social reference and hostility, suspicious thoughts and mistrust of others, and fears of persecution ( Bebbington et al, 2013 ; Combs et al, 2006 ; Elahi et al, 2017 ; Freeman, 2016 ; Green et al, 2008 ). Paranoia shows full taxometric continuity across clinical and nonclinical populations ( Ahmed et al, 2012 ; Edens et al, 2009 ; Elahi et al, 2017 ), supporting a dimensional approach to paranoia and suggesting that studying the cognitive and affective correlates of paranoid thinking in the general population will yield insights into more severe paranoia in clinical settings ( Freeman et al, 2005 ; Raihani & Bell, 2019 ). Our aim is to determine whether paranoia correlates with altered social reward value, and whether this predicts social behavior in an experimental setting.…”

A Model of Successful School Leadership from the International Successful School Principalship Project

“…Perhaps using a spiritual, moral or social justice base, or more simply from an understanding of what is possible in education, they have the courage to what is right to help their students be the best they can. Chapters from the fourth book illustrate this courage well [21,[35][36][37][38][39].…”

“…These models have been developed by two Australian groups, from doctoral research supervised by the Australian researchers in Singapore and Indonesia, and from the Cyprus research group full accounts of these models can be found in [11,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]. Across most of these models from the four countries, establishing collective direction, developing people and improving teaching and learning are common and explicit, and implicitly there is a sense of being able to lead change.…”