Projects

A Transdiagnostic Understanding of Paranoia

Paranoia and a host of overlapping constructs (suspiciousness, mistrust, etc.) are related to many traditional psychiatric diagnoses (schizophrenia, paranoid personality disorder, PTSD, etc.), often as diagnostic criteria. These traits and symptoms entail perceiving that others are untrustworthy, unfairly treating oneself, or mean one harm (social or physical), sometimes to an extent that causes considerable social impairment. Considerable effort has been made to understand the mechanisms underlying paranoia; however, this research rarely considers paranoia as a potentially transdiagnostic phenomenon. In essence, it is unclear whether paranoia is truly one thing, many separate things, or perhaps one thing with many unique manifestations. The TIPL lab is beginning a series of studies that aims to map the universe of constructs related to paranoia (mistrust, social anxiety, hypervigilance, etc.) and develop an understanding of how these constructs map onto transdiagnostic models of psychopathology (e.g., HiTOP) and relevant mechanistic models of paranoia (e.g., computational models).

Integrating Social Processes in Psychopathology

Research on psychosis and personality disorders, as well as many other literatures, is limited by the fact that symptom-related social processes have poor theoretical frameworks and are limited in the extent to which cognition and behavior are meaningfully integrated. To address this, the TIPL lab will be combining data from clinical interviews, traditional social cognitive tasks, reinforcement learning tasks, dyadic interaction paradigms, and longitudinal follow-ups to advance the field's understanding of the complex interplay between perceptual-interpretive processes, behavior, and social outcomes.