Abstract

This paper confirmed the cognitive biases of people with paranoid tendencies in either threatening or enhancing self-concept: bias in the information processing relevant to the self, attributional bias, and explicit self-concept. The hypothesis of this study was that, when their self-concepts is threatened, people with paranoid tendencies become sensitive to stimuli related to self, attribute negative events to others, and explicitly perceive themselves positively. The another goal of this study was to demonstrate that such individuals reveal these cognitive biases when their self-concepts are threatened, but in the absence of threat, they reveal these biases to a much lesser degree. Cognitive biases were investigated in three groups of college students: one with paranoid tendencies, one with depressive tendencies, and one normal control group. The students in each category were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was given positive feedback regarding a disguised IQ test and the other was given negative feedback about the test. The hypothesis was that the paranoid subjects in the group whose self-concept was threatened (i.e., that was given negative feedback) would show more attention bias to words related to self than subjects from the control group, would attribute failure in the task to a partner, and would rate themselves positively in self-descriptive words. Another hypothesis of this study was that the paranoid members of the group in which self-concept was threatened but given positive feedback would show these cognitive biases much less. The results of the experiment supported these hypotheses. These findings are interpreted as consistent with the recent theories that paranoia functions as a defense against low self-esteem and that the paranoid have underlying weak self-concepts and are very sensitive to threats to self. When under threat, they show so external attributional bias that they may preserve their positive self-concept. Implications and limitations of this study were discussed.