ArticleSocial psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology2018
The network structure of paranoia in the general population.
Article in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimental studies of paranoid thinking in clinical and nonclinical populations: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Dopamine manipulations modulate paranoid social inferences in healthy people.Translational psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Post-Pandemic Differences in Symptom Networks and Personality Associations Among College Students: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The central role of negative emotional states, rejection sensitivity and negative self-beliefs in a complex non-clinical paranoia network model.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- The developmental course of adolescent paranoia: a longitudinal analysis of the interacting role of mistrust and general psychopathology.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- An exploratory network analysis to investigate schizotypy's structure using the 'Multidimensional Schizotypy Scale' and 'Oxford-Liverpool Inventory' in a healthy cohort.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Empirical evidence for a process-based model of health-related quality of life using network analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- "Rejection Makes Me Suspicious": Complex Temporal Network Approach to the Dynamics of Real-Time Paranoid Thoughts and Psychological Vulnerability.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2025Article
- Comparison of Depressive Symptoms between International and Domestic Students in a Japanese University: Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Pandemic.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Manipulating self and other schemas to explore psychological processes associated with paranoid beliefs: an online experimental study.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Article
- The profile of unusual beliefs associated with metacognitive thinking and attributional styles.PsyCh journal · 2022Article
- Epistemic Communities under Active Inference.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Demoralisation and its link with depression, psychological adjustment and suicidality among cancer patients: A network psychometrics approach.Cancer medicine · 2022Article
- Paranoid beliefs and conspiracy mentality are associated with different forms of mistrust: A three-nation study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Insight-related beliefs and controllability appraisals contribute little to hallucinated voices: a transdiagnostic network analysis study.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2021Article
- Mistrust and negative self-esteem: Two paths from attachment styles to paranoia.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2021Article
- The network structure of schizotypy in the general population.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2021Article
- Dissociation and insecure attachment as mediators of the relation between childhood emotional abuse and nonclinical paranoid traits.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2021Article
- Mistrust and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Differently Mediate the Effects of Psychological Factors on Propensity for COVID-19 Vaccine.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposeBebbington and colleagues' influential study on 'the structure of paranoia in the general population' used data from the British National Psychiatric Morbidity Survey and latent variable analysis methods. Network analysis is a relatively new approach in psychopathology research that considers mental disorders to be emergent phenomena from causal interactions among symptoms. This study re-analysed the British National Psychiatric Morbidity Survey data using network analysis to examine the network structure of paranoia in the general population.
methodsWe used a Graphical Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (glasso) method that estimated an optimal network structure based on the Extended Bayesian Information Criterion. Network sub-communities were identified by spinglass and EGA algorithms and centrality metrics were calculated per item and per sub-community.
resultsWe replicated Bebbington's four component structure of paranoia, identifying 'interpersonal sensitivities', 'mistrust', 'ideas of reference' and 'ideas of persecution' as sub-communities in the network. In line with previous experimental findings, worry was the most central item in the network. However, 'mistrust' and 'ideas of reference' were the most central sub-communities.
conclusionsRather than a strict hierarchy, we argue that the structure of paranoia is best thought of as a heterarchy, where the activation of high-centrality nodes and communities is most likely to lead to steady state paranoia. We also highlight the novel methodological approach used by this study: namely, using network analysis to re-examine a population structure of psychopathology previously identified by latent variable approaches.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.