Self-discrepancies and persecutory delusions: evidence for a model of paranoid ideation

The self-discrepancies of paranoid patients, depressed patients, and nonpatients were examined using a modified version of Higgins's Selves Questionnaire (E. T. Higgins, 1987). Nonpatients showed high consistencies between all domains of the self-concept, whereas depressed patients showed marked self-discrepancies. Paranoid patients alone displayed a high degree of consistency between self-perceptions and self-guides together with discrepancies between self-perceptions and the believed perceptions of parents about the self. Paranoid patients also believed that their parents had more negative views of them than did other participants. These findings are consistent with R. P. Bentall, P. Kinderman, and S. Kaney's (1994) model, which assumes that persecutory delusions are a product of attributional processes serving to maintain a positive explicit self-concept.