Parental bonding, attachment, reality discrimination, and psychotic-like experiences

Abstract

Psychological models of psychotic experiences suggest that social adversity (e.g., difficult family relationships, bullying) and anomalous percepts play an important role in the development of paranoid thinking, while intrusive cognitions and problems in reality discrimination play an important role in the development of auditory hallucinations (AH). The studies reported in this thesis examined a number of research questions relevant to these models, by investigating psychotic experiences in non-clinical populations (typically referred to as psychotic-like experiences, or PLEs). In Study 1 it was shown that the association between poor parental bonding and PLEs is mediated by individual differences in exposure to bullying and levels of negative affect. In Study 2 it was shown that associations between insecure attachment styles and paranoid thinking are mediated by individual differences in loneliness. In Study 3 it was shown that the association between experiencing anomalous percepts and paranoid thinking is moderated by individual differences in attachment anxiety. In Study 4 it was shown that the association between experiencing intrusive thoughts and AH-proneness is moderated by individual differences in reality discrimination skills. Finally, in Study 5 it was shown that a person’s reality discrimination abilities can be weakened through the induction of a negative mood. The studies included in this thesis, therefore, show how a variety of social, emotional, and cognitive factors interact with each other to foster or preclude the development of PLEs in ways that extend current psychological models of AH and paranoid thinking.