Editing Paranoia (section)

==Paranoid social cognition==
Social psychological research has proposed a mild form of paranoid cognition, ''paranoid social cognition'', that has its origins in social determinants more than intra-psychic conflict.<ref name=Fenigstein92>Fenigstein, A., & Vanable, P. A. (1992). "Paranoia and self-consciousness." ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 62, 129 – 138.</ref><ref name=Kramer94>Kramer, R. M. (1994). "The sinister attribution error: Origins and consequences of collective paranoia." ''Motivation and Emotion'', 18, 199 – 230.</ref><ref name=Kramer95a>Kramer, R. M. (1995a). "In dubious battle: Heightened accountability, dysphoric cognition, and self-defeating bargaining behavior." In R. M. Kramer & D. M. Messick (Eds.), ''Negotiation in its social context'' (pp.&nbsp;95 – 120). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.</ref><ref name=Kramer95b>Kramer, R. M. (1995b). "Power, paranoia, and distrust in organizations: The distorted view from the top." ''Research on Negotiation in Organizations'', 5, 119 – 154.</ref><ref name=Zimbardo81>Zimbardo, P. G., Andersen, S. M., & Kabat, L. G. (1981). "Induced hearing deficit generates experimental paranoia." ''Science'', 212, 1529 – 1531.</ref> This perspective states that in milder forms, paranoid cognitions may be very common among normal individuals. For instance, it is not considered strange to have self-centered thoughts of being talked about, or to be suspicious of others' intentions, or to assume ill-will or hostility (e.g., a feeling of everything going against them). According to Kramer (1998), these milder forms of paranoid cognition may be considered an adaptive response to cope with or make sense of a disturbing and threatening social environment.

Paranoid cognition captures the idea that dysphoric self-consciousness may be related to the position a person occupies in a social system. This [[self-consciousness]] conduces to a hypervigilant and ruminative mode to process social information that finally will stimulate a variety of paranoid-like forms of social misperception and misjudgment.<ref name=Kramer98>Kramer, R. M. (1998). "Revisiting the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam decisions twenty-five years later: How well has the group think hypothesis stood the test of time?" ''Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes'', 73, 236 – 271.</ref>  This model identifies four components that are essential to understanding paranoid social cognition: situational antecedents, dysphoric self-consciousness, hypervigilance and rumination, and judgmental biases.

===Situational antecedents===
Perceived social distinctiveness, perceived evaluative scrutiny and uncertainty about the social standing.
*Perceived social distinctiveness: According to the [[social identity theory]],<ref name=Turner87>Turner, J. (1987). ''Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.</ref> people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances.<ref name=Cota86>Cota, A. A., & Dion, K. L. (1986). "Salience of gender and sex composition of ad-hoc groups: An experimental test of distinctiveness theory." ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 50, 770 – 776.</ref><ref name=Turner87/> Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain people's behavior when these attributes make them unique in a social group. This distinctive attribute may have influence not only in how people are perceived, but may also affect the way they perceive themselves. 
*Perceived evaluative scrutiny: According to this model, dysphoric self-consciousness may increase when people feel under moderate or intensive evaluative social scrutiny such as when an asymmetric relationship is analyzed. For example, when asked about relationships, doctoral students remembered events that they interpreted as significant to their degree of trust in their advisors when compared with their advisors. This suggests that students are willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is to them. Also, students spent more time ruminating about behaviors, events, and their relationship in general.{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}}
*Uncertainty about social standing: Knowledge about social standing is another factor that may induce paranoid social cognition. Many researchers have argued that experiencing uncertainty about a social position in a social system constitutes an adverse psychological state, one which people are highly motivated to reduce.

===Dysphoric self-consciousness===
An aversive form of heightened 'public self-consciousness' is characterized by the feelings that one is under intensive evaluation or [[scrutiny]].<ref name=Kramer95a/><ref>Sutton, R. I., & Galunic, D. C. (1996). "Consequences of public scrutiny for leaders and their organizations." In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), ''Research in organizational behavior'' (Vol. 18, pp. 201–250). Greenwich, CT: JAI.</ref> Becoming self-tormenting will increase the odds of interpreting others' behaviors in a self-referential way.

===Hypervigilance and rumination===
Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hypervigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hypervigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hypervigilance. Hypervigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hypervigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception.<ref>Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). ''Stress, appraisal, and coping''. New York: Springer.</ref> Rumination is another possible response to threatening social information. Rumination can be related to the paranoid social cognition because it can increase negative thinking about negative events, and evoke a pessimistic explanatory style.

===Judgmental and cognitive biases===
Three main judgmental consequences have been identified:<ref name=Kramer94/>
*The sinister attribution error: This bias captures the tendency that social perceivers have to overattribute lack of trustworthiness to others.
*The overly personalistic construal of social interaction: Refers to the inclination that paranoid perceiver has to interpret others'  action in a disproportional self-referential way, increasing the belief that they are the target of others' thoughts and actions. A special kind of bias in the biased punctuation of social interaction, which entail an overperception of causal linking among independent events.
*The exaggerated perception of conspiracy: Refers to the disposition that the paranoid perceiver has to overattribute social coherence and coordination to others' actions.

Meta-analyses have confirmed that individuals with paranoia tend to jump to conclusions and are incorrigible in their judgements, even for delusion-neutral scenarios.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=McLean|first1=Benjamin F.|last2=Mattiske|first2=Julie K.|last3=Balzan|first3=Ryan P.|date=2017-03-01|title=Association of the Jumping to Conclusions and Evidence Integration Biases With Delusions in Psychosis: A Detailed Meta-analysis|journal=Schizophrenia Bulletin|volume=43|issue=2|pages=344–354|doi=10.1093/schbul/sbw056|issn=1745-1701|pmc=5605251|pmid=27169465}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Dudley|first1=Robert|last2=Taylor|first2=Peter|last3=Wickham|first3=Sophie|last4=Hutton|first4=Paul|date=2016|title=Psychosis, Delusions and the "Jumping to Conclusions" Reasoning Bias: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis|url=|journal=Schizophrenia Bulletin|volume=42|issue=3|pages=652–665|doi=10.1093/schbul/sbv150|issn=1745-1701|pmc=4838082|pmid=26519952}}</ref>