And it's all to blame the coronavirus and the threat it caused. Many people could become paranoid due to stress, insecurity and a sense of threat.
In times of unexpected uncertainty such as the sudden onset of a global pandemic, people may be more prone to paranoia, researchers at Yale University suggest in a new study published in the journal eLife.
"When our world changes unexpectedly, we want to blame someone for this variability, understand it and perhaps neutralize it," said Philip Corlett of Yale, a professor of psychiatry and one of the study's authors.
What is paranoia?
Paranoia is a key symptom of a serious mental illness marked by the belief that other people have malicious intentions. But it also manifests itself to varying degrees in the general population. For example, a previous study found that 20% of the population believed that people were against them at some point in the past year, and as many as 8% of respondents replied that other people were actively willing to hurt them.
More: PARANOIA - symptoms of paranoia. How to recognize paranoia?
There is a theory that paranoia stems from an inability to accurately estimate social risks. But the authors of the study hypothesized that paranoia is ingrained in a more basic learning mechanism that is triggered by insecurity, even in the absence of social risk.
Self-examination
In a series of experiments, they asked subjects with varying degrees of paranoia to play a card game where the best options for success were secretly altered. People with little or no paranoia very slowly assumed that the best choice had changed. However, paranoid people expected even more volatility in the game. They whimsically changed their choice - even after winning. The researchers then raised the uncertainty by altering the chances of winning mid-game without informing the participants. This sudden change has made even people with low paranoia act like people with paranoia, learning less from the consequences of their choices.
In a related experiment, Yale scientists Jane Taylor and Stephanie Groman trained rats, a relatively antisocial species, to complete a similar task in which the best choices for success changed. Rats that were administeredmethamphetamine - which is known to cause paranoia in humans - acted like paranoid people. They, too, expected a lot of volatility and relied more on their expectations than on learning from the assignment.
A mathematical model was then applied to compare the choices made by rats and humans when performing similar tasks. The researchers found that the results of the rats that received methamphetamine resembled those of people with paranoia.
- We hope this work will facilitate a mechanistic explanation of paranoia, a first step in the development of new treatments targeting these underlying mechanisms, Corlett said.