Disentangling paranoia and social anxiety: Overlap and differentiation in daily life.

Abstract

Paranoia, the unfounded belief and mistrust about other people's intentions as threatening, and social anxiety, the intense worry and fear regarding social interactions, share a number of phenomenological features. Furthermore, both can be conceptualized as traits ranging from mild or subclinical to severe clinical expressions. However, few studies have examined how these trait-level vulnerabilities differentially map onto individuals' daily experiences. The present study used experience sampling methodology to disentangle the overlap and differentiation of trait-level social anxiety and paranoia in daily life. A total of 238 young adults were prompted 8 times daily for 1 week to complete experience sampling methodology questionnaires that assessed affect, cognitive appraisals, suspicious thoughts, activities, and social behaviors. As hypothesized, paranoia and social anxiety were both independently associated with negative affect and negative self- and other-related appraisals. However, after controlling for shared variance, only paranoia was uniquely associated with anger, intense feelings, and threat-related suspicious thoughts, whereas only social anxiety was uniquely associated with feeling not cared for, preference to be alone while with others, and among participants who were alone, interpreting being alone as due to others' dislike. Cross-level interactions further showed that only social anxiety exacerbated the inverse association between momentary reports of feeling close to others and the preference to be alone. Overall, these findings suggest that although paranoia and social anxiety are closely intertwined in daily life, they may reflect partially distinct interpersonal processing: paranoia involving heightened threat detection and suspiciousness, and social anxiety involving heightened sensitivity to rejection and unease. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).