THE SELF, ATTRIBUTIONAL PROCESSES AND ABNORMAL BELIEFS - TOWARDS A MODEL OF PERSECUTORY DELUSIONS

In this paper we review a series of recent investigations into cogniti ve abnormalities associated with persecutory delusions. Studies indica te that persecutory delusions am associated with abnormal attention to threat-related stimuli, an explanatory bias towards attributing negat ive outcomes to external causes and biases in information processing r elating to the self-concept. We propose an integrative model to accoun t for these findings in which it is hypothesized that, in deluded pati ents, activation of self/ideal discrepancies by threat-related informa tion triggers defensive explanatory biases, which have the function of reducing the self/ideal discrepancies but result in persecutory ideat ion. We conclude by discussing the implications of this model for the cognitive-behavioural treatment of paranoid delusions.