Psychological theories of delusional thinking: In search of integration

Hingley, Susan M.

doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1992.tb01716.x

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…These externalizing attributions reduce the discrepancy between beliefs about the self and ideals but, when made consistently over a period of time, lead to a persecutory worldview in which others are believed to hold hostile views about the self. This idea that paranoid thinking arises from dysfunctional attempts to regulate low self-esteem is consistent with some psychodynamic accounts of paranoia (Colby, 1977;Hingley, 1992) and the idea of that paranoid schizophrenia is a form of 'camouflaged depression' (Zigler & Glick, 1988).…”

Section: Explanatory Style and Persecutory Delusionsmentioning

confidence: 53%

‘Jumping to Conclusions’ and Attributional Style in Persecutory Delusions

2007

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Persecutory delusions have been associated with a tendency to 'jump to conclusions' and an abnormal attributional style. We hypothesised that jumping to conclusions -requesting relatively little information prior to decision-making -could account for the observed biases in attributional style. Individuals with persecutory delusions (n = 24) were compared with matched depressed psychiatric (n = 24) and nonpsychiatric (n = 24) comparison groups using a modified inductive reasoning task (John & Dodgson, 1994) on which participants requested information before making attributions for common social events. Both clinical groups 'jumped to conclusions' and made attributions on the basis of little evidence. This tendency was greatest in individuals with persecutory delusions. Differences were also found in the proportions of questions seeking internal, external and situational information. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in the final attributions made. These findings inform a model of persecutory delusions whereby a limited cognitive search strategy may influence attributional style.

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Section: Explanatory Style and Persecutory Delusionsmentioning

confidence: 53%

‘Jumping to Conclusions’ and Attributional Style in Persecutory Delusions

2007

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“…The different patterns of psychopathology demonstrated by these groups may well be related to the difference in the use of such defensive processes to deal with core disturbances in the self-concept. As mentioned above, psychodynamic theories of delusional beliefs have frequently argued that defensive processes lie behind such phenomena (Hingley, 1992). The findings of this study are therefore wholly complementary with such an approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Attentional bias, persecutory delusions and the self‐concept

Kinderman

1994

British Journal of Medical Psychology

110

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Recent studies of cognitive processes associated with persecutory delusions suggest that such delusions are associated with abnormalities in the processing of information relevant to the self. Attention to positive and negative trait words was studied in subjects suffering from persecutory delusions, matched subjects with depressed mood and normal controls using an emotional Stroop task. Subjects were required to name the ink colours of: (i) meaningless strings of Os, (ii) low self-esteem personal adjectives, (iii) high self-esteem adjectives and (iv) neutral adjectives. subjects were also asked to rate the degree to which they endorsed as self-descriptive these and other personally descriptive adjectives. The subjects with persecutory delusions demonstrated a significantly higher rate of endorsement for positive adjectives than negative adjectives, but showed a marked degree of interference when colour-naming both positive and negative words. The relevance of these findings to a model of persecutory delusions involving the self-concept is discussed.

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“…Alternative psychodynamic formulations have been developed and are described elsewhere (e.g. Federn, 1952;Hingley, 1992). It is not intended to deal further with psychodynamic or other models unrelated to cognitive psychology in this paper.…”

Section: Possible Cognitive Factors Underlying Delusionsmentioning

confidence: 99%