Trust processes and delusional thinking
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Trust processes and delusional thinking
IRAS ID
315814
Contact name
Anton Martinez
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Sheffield
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Study summary:
Excessive mistrust of others is considered a core feature of persecutory delusions which can lead to interpersonal conflicts such as unfounded jealousy, resentment, and litigious behaviours. Research carried out in the general population has found that paranoid traits are associated with perceiving others as untrustworthy and that this association was partially explained by insecure attachment styles as well as negative self-esteem. However, these findings are yet to be replicated in clinical populations. This research study aims to explore how various forms of mistrust (i.e., interpersonal; institutional; perceptual) differ between clinical participants and non-clinical controls and if these differences are explained by psychological variables (e.g., attachment styles; self-esteem). Moreover, we aim to explore how neural processing of trustworthy and untrustworthy face images differs between clinical and non-clinical groups by recording event-related potentials (ERP) using portable electroencephalography (EEG) equipment. For this purpose, we will recruit 40 clinical participants through NHS inpatient and outpatient mental health services who will meet the criteria for schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) with a history of paranoia and 40 non-clinical participants who will serve as a control group. Both groups will complete a series of self-report questionnaires as well as an experimental task in which participants will be asked to rate the trustworthiness of a series of face images while their neural activity is recorded using EEG. This research will provide a broad understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in mistrust processes and potentially inform tailored treatments for clinical populations experiencing persecutory delusions.Lay summary of results:
Seventeen clinical participants diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorder and fifteen non-clinical controls, were recruited to complete a trustworthiness face recognition task while their brain activity was recorded using mobile EEG equipment. Results revealed that participants in the clinical group showed marked neural activity 170ms after stimulus presentation (N170) when viewing untrustworthy faces but not trustworthy ones. This difference in face processing was not found in the non-clinical control group. Moreover, participants in the clinical group reported higher levels of mistrust than those in the non-clinical group, reflected in a bias towards judging unfamiliar faces as untrustworthy.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/NW/0354
Date of REC Opinion
30 Nov 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion