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Self-discrepancies, attentional bias and persecutory delusions
Peter Kinderman1, Sharon Prince, Glenn Waller
1Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Liverpool, UK. p.kinderman@liverpool.ac.uk
The British Journal of Clinical Psychology
|April 5, 2003
Summary
Individuals with persecutory delusions show altered self-perception after exposure to threat. Specifically, they experience reduced self-ideal discrepancies and increased self-other discrepancies, supporting models of paranoid ideation.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Psychiatry
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Persecutory delusions are linked to attentional biases toward threat, especially self-related information.
- Understanding these biases is crucial for explaining delusional thinking.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate attentional biases to various threats.
- To examine changes in self-perception following threat exposure in individuals with persecutory delusions.
Main Methods:
- Assessed self-discrepancies (actual, ideal, other-actual) in three groups: persecutory delusions, psychiatric comparison, and non-psychiatric comparison.
- Utilized an emotional Stroop task to manipulate attentional bias to five threat types.
- Re-assessed self-discrepancies post-manipulation.
Main Results:
- No initial group differences in self-actual:self-ideal or self-actual:other-actual discrepancies.
- Post-Stroop task, paranoid participants showed reduced self-actual:self-ideal discrepancies.
- Post-Stroop task, paranoid participants showed increased self-actual:other-actual discrepancies.
Conclusions:
- Repeated assessment of self-discrepancies after threat processing is novel.
- Findings support models of paranoid ideation, suggesting threat processing impacts self-perception in delusions.