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. This perspective states that in milder forms, paranoid cognitions may be very common among normal individuals. For instance, it is not strange that people may exhibit in their daily life, self-centered thought such as they are being talked about, suspiciousness about other’ intentions, and assumptions of ill-will or hostility (i.e. people may feel as if everything is going against them). According to Kramer, (1998) these milder forms of paranoid cognition may be considered as 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 with the position that people occupy within 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. 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, people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances. Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain peoples 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 their 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 more willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is motivated to pay attention to them. Also students spent more time ruminating about the behaviors, events, and their relationship in general. Uncertainty about social standing: The knowledge about the 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
Refers to an aversive form of heightened public self-consciousness characterized by the feelings that one is under intensive evaluation or scrutiny. 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.