No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Paranoia reveals the complexity in assigning individuals to groups on the basis of inferred intentions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2022
Abstract
We suggest that variation, error, and bias will be essential to include in a complete computational theory of groups – particularly given that formation of group representations must often rely on inferences of intentions. We draw on the case study of paranoia to illustrate that intentions that do not correspond to group-constitutive roles may often be perceived as such.
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Bebbington, P. E., McBride, O., Steel, C., Kuipers, E., Radovanoviĉ, M., Brugha, T., … Freeman, D. (2013). The structure of paranoia in the general population. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 202(6), 419–427.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cameron, N. (1959). The paranoid pseudo-community revisited. American Journal of Sociology, 65(1), 52–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019). Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 40, 3–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, D., & Bentall, R. P. (2017). The concomitants of conspiracy concerns. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(5), 595–604.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freeman, D., Loe, B. S., Kingdon, D., Startup, H., Molodynski, A., Rosebrock, L., … Bird, J. C. (2021). The revised Green et al., Paranoid Thoughts Scale (R-GPTS): Psychometric properties, severity ranges, and clinical cut-offs. Psychological Medicine, 51(2), 244–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, D., Waite, F., Rosebrock, L., Petit, A., Causier, C., East, A., … Lambe, S. (2020). Coronavirus conspiracy beliefs, mistrust, and compliance with government guidelines in England. Psychological Medicine, 52(2), 1–13. doi: 10.1017/S0033291720001890.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenburgh, A., Bell, V., & Raihani, N. (2019). Paranoia and conspiracy: Group cohesion increases harmful intent attribution in the trust game. PeerJ, 7, e7403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, C., Garety, P. A., Freeman, D., Fowler, D., Bebbington, P., Dunn, G., & Kuipers, E. (2006). Content and affect in persecutory delusions. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45, 561–577. doi: 10.1348/014466506X98768.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2018). How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 909–926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raihani, N. J., & Bell, V. (2017). Paranoia and the social representation of others: A large-scale game theory approach. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raihani, N. J., & Bell, V. (2019). An evolutionary perspective on paranoia. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(2), 114–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saalfeld, V., Ramadan, Z., Bell, V., & Raihani, N. J. (2018). Experimentally induced social threat increases paranoid thinking. Royal Society Open Science, 5(8), 180569.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Target article
Toward a computational theory of social groups: A finite set of cognitive primitives for representing any and all social groups in the context of conflict
Related commentaries (29)
A neuroscientific perspective on the computational theory of social groups
Advantages and limitations of representing groups in terms of recursive utilities
Are we there yet? Every computational theory needs a few black boxes, including theories about groups
Beyond folk-sociology: Extending Pietraszewski's model to large-group dynamics
Can group representations based on relational cues warrant the rich inferences typically drawn from group membership?
Coalitionary psychology and group dynamics on social media
Compassion within conflict: Toward a computational theory of social groups informed by maternal brain physiology
Conciliation and meta-contrast are important for understanding how people assign group memberships during conflict situations
Developmental antecedents of representing “group” behavior: A commentary on Pietraszewski's theory of groups
Group? What group? A computational model of the group needs a psychology of “us” (not “them”)
How do we know who may replace each other in triadic conflict roles?
Interacting with others while reacting to the environment
Internal versus external group conflicts
Latent structure learning as an alternative computation for group inference
Learning agents that acquire representations of social groups
More than one way to skin a cat: Addressing the arbitration problem in developmental science
On vagueness and parochialism in psychological research on groups
Paranoia reveals the complexity in assigning individuals to groups on the basis of inferred intentions
Private versus public: A dual model for resource-constrained conflict representations
Psychological and actual group formation: Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient
Shadow banning, astroturfing, catfishing, and other online conflicts where beliefs about group membership diverge
Shared intentionality and the representation of groups; or, how to build a socially adept robot
Signals and cues of social groups
Social groups and the computational conundrums of delays, proximity, and loyalty
Societies and other kinds of social groups
The labelled container: Conceptual development of social group representations
Towards a computational network theory of social groups
Triadic conflict “primitives” can be reduced to welfare trade-off ratios
Using laboratory intergroup conflict and riots as a “stress test”
Author response
More “us,” less “them”: An appeal for pluralism – and stand-alone computational theorizing – in our science of social groups