Defensive projection and paranoid delusions

The present study considered the implication of a new explanation of defensive projection for the thematic qualities of schizophrenic delusions. Projection was proposed to be a form of self-deception practiced by people who make excessive use of social comparison in self-evaluation. Defensive projection occurs when an unacceptable quality is minimized by distorting this quality in other people used as standards of comparison. Reactive paranoid schizophrenics were expected to show projection as a distortion of social comparison and process paranoid schizophrenics were not. This was tested in terms of a number of thematic qualities that should appear in actual delusions of reactive paranoids but not in those of process paranoids (i.e. more specific social references, attribution of untrustworthiness by men, attribution of hostility by women, concern with female identity in women). The results confirmed these predictions and supported the social-comparison interpretation of projection as a defense in reactive schizophrenics that contributes to the development of delusions.