Abstract

ESPINOSA, Regina; VALIENTE, Carmen  and  BENTALL, Richard P.. Beliefs about self and others in persecutory delusions. Clínica y Salud [online]. 2014, vol.25, n.3, pp.187-195. ISSN 2174-0550.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clysa.2014.10.005.

Some psychological theories about persecutory delusions emphasize the importance of the concepts of self and others (Bentall, Corcoran, Howard, Blackwood, & Kinderman, 2001). However, results are inconsistent, in part due to an almost exclusive usage of explicit measures focusing on self-esteem. Freeman (2007) has proposed that evaluative beliefs about self and others are a more stable indicator and a better predictor than self-esteem. Then, this study explored the differences in the explicit and implicit conception of self and others between patients with paranoia (n = 79), depression (n = 38), and a healthy control group (n = 52). The results showed that at the explicit level clinical groups had more negative evaluative beliefs about the self than controls, but there were no differences in evaluative beliefs about others between groups. Only the depression group showed a significantly more negative self than others. At implicit level, although patients had a more negative self than controls, these differences were not significant. There were no differences between groups in implicit indexes of others either. However, the control group presented an implicit pattern opposite to the explicit one, in which the index of others was significantly more negative than the index self. This study highlights the importance of exploring self together with the concept of others at different dimensions of processing.

Keywords : Persecutory delusions; Paranoia; Schizophrenia; Evaluative negative beliefs; Self; Others; Implicit measures.

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