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Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game

Current computational models suggest that paranoia may be explained by stronger higher-order beliefs about others and increased sensitivity to environments. However, it is unclear whether this applies to social contexts, and whether it is specific to harmful intent attributions, the live expression...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Barnby, Joseph M., Bell, Vaughan, Mehta, Mitul A., Moutoussis, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7591074/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33057428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008372
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author Barnby, Joseph M.
Bell, Vaughan
Mehta, Mitul A.
Moutoussis, Michael
author_facet Barnby, Joseph M.
Bell, Vaughan
Mehta, Mitul A.
Moutoussis, Michael
author_sort Barnby, Joseph M.
collection PubMed
description Current computational models suggest that paranoia may be explained by stronger higher-order beliefs about others and increased sensitivity to environments. However, it is unclear whether this applies to social contexts, and whether it is specific to harmful intent attributions, the live expression of paranoia. We sought to fill this gap by fitting a computational model to data (n = 1754) from a modified serial dictator game, to explore whether pre-existing paranoia could be accounted by specific alterations to cognitive parameters characterising harmful intent attributions. We constructed a ‘Bayesian brain’ model of others’ intent, which we fitted to harmful intent and self-interest attributions made over 18 trials, across three different partners. We found that pre-existing paranoia was associated with greater uncertainty about other’s actions. It moderated the relationship between learning rates and harmful intent attributions, making harmful intent attributions less reliant on prior interactions. Overall, the magnitude of harmful intent attributions was directly related to their uncertainty, and importantly, the opposite was true for self-interest attributions. Our results explain how pre-existing paranoia may be the result of an increased need to attend to immediate experiences in determining intentional threat, at the expense of what is already known, and more broadly, they suggest that environments that induce greater probabilities of harmful intent attributions may also induce states of uncertainty, potentially as an adaptive mechanism to better detect threatening others. Importantly, we suggest that if paranoia were able to be explained exclusively by core domain-general alterations we would not observe differential parameter estimates underlying harmful-intent and self-interest attributions.
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spelling pubmed-75910742020-10-30 Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game Barnby, Joseph M. Bell, Vaughan Mehta, Mitul A. Moutoussis, Michael PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Current computational models suggest that paranoia may be explained by stronger higher-order beliefs about others and increased sensitivity to environments. However, it is unclear whether this applies to social contexts, and whether it is specific to harmful intent attributions, the live expression of paranoia. We sought to fill this gap by fitting a computational model to data (n = 1754) from a modified serial dictator game, to explore whether pre-existing paranoia could be accounted by specific alterations to cognitive parameters characterising harmful intent attributions. We constructed a ‘Bayesian brain’ model of others’ intent, which we fitted to harmful intent and self-interest attributions made over 18 trials, across three different partners. We found that pre-existing paranoia was associated with greater uncertainty about other’s actions. It moderated the relationship between learning rates and harmful intent attributions, making harmful intent attributions less reliant on prior interactions. Overall, the magnitude of harmful intent attributions was directly related to their uncertainty, and importantly, the opposite was true for self-interest attributions. Our results explain how pre-existing paranoia may be the result of an increased need to attend to immediate experiences in determining intentional threat, at the expense of what is already known, and more broadly, they suggest that environments that induce greater probabilities of harmful intent attributions may also induce states of uncertainty, potentially as an adaptive mechanism to better detect threatening others. Importantly, we suggest that if paranoia were able to be explained exclusively by core domain-general alterations we would not observe differential parameter estimates underlying harmful-intent and self-interest attributions. Public Library of Science 2020-10-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7591074/ /pubmed/33057428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008372 Text en © 2020 Barnby et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Barnby, Joseph M.
Bell, Vaughan
Mehta, Mitul A.
Moutoussis, Michael
Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title_full Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title_fullStr Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title_full_unstemmed Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title_short Reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: Evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
title_sort reduction in social learning and increased policy uncertainty about harmful intent is associated with pre-existing paranoid beliefs: evidence from modelling a modified serial dictator game
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7591074/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33057428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008372
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