By Hal Brown, MSW
In reading “It’s over and nothing makes sense”: QAnon believers struggle to cope with Biden inauguration by Salon’s Igor Derysh I was reminded of a diary I posted on Jan 14th: Our paranoid population: Even a few percent is a hell of a lot of people. I am reposting it again, but first here’s an update:
Igor Derysh reviewed a number of tweets and came up with a few gems which demonstrate how some QAnon adherents are handling Biden’s becoming president. The illustration above shows how some of them are trying to cope with the fact that Joe Biden is now the president.
The most outlandish belief being expressed are that he has always been part of the QAnon plot (click to enlarge image below).
Here's a poll from a QAnon Telegram channel today suggesting a divide. (Click to enlarge) Note that 33,739 people voted.
The tweets shown above are in Igor Derysh’s article but are from Media Matters’
Senior Researcher Alex Kaplan, he indicates he focuses on social media misinformation, disinformation, and online extremism. His Twitter page has interesting tweets about QAnon and other subjects related to his expertise.
Another tweet in the Derysh article is allegedly from someone named Josh Collins tweeted by Jared Holt, of The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. Cultivating a global network of digital forensic analysts (#DigitalSherlocks) to combat disinformation tweeted this:
I tried to find Josh Collins on Twitter but was unable to do so after scrolling through dozens of people with that name and matching his photo. It may have come from a QAnon group chat not on accessible on Twitter. Perhaps the notion that Biden is a hologram is a snark.
Tech columnist for the New York Times Kevin Roose tweeted this from a QAnon adherent Ron Watkins who seems to be moored in reality:
This is from The New York Times: QAnon believers struggle with inauguration (Jan 20).
Followers hoping for guidance from “Q,” the pseudonymous message board user whose posts power the movement, were bound to be disappointed. The account has been silent for weeks, and had not posted Wednesday.
Ron Watkins, a major QAnon booster whom some have suspected of being “Q” himself, posted a note of resignation on his Telegram channel on Wednesday afternoon.
“We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution,” he wrote. “As we enter into the next administration please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.”
Now to the psychology:
Just because someone has a severe personality disorder doesn’t mean they are lacking in intelligence or even creativity. It is true that their critical thinking skills may seem to be lacking but this may or may not extend to all areas of their lives. They may be able to think critically on some subjects and hold down jobs where it is necessary to know what’s real and what isn’t. They have what clinicians call bias blind spots: “The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one's own judgment.” Wikipedia . They can also use the defense mechanism of compartmentalization.
“Let us now abstract the basic elements in the paranoid style. The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life.” (Richard Hofstadter, The pseudo‐conservative revolt. The American Scholar, 2006, 9–27.)
A conspiratorial mindset is characterized by a persistent belief that one or more individuals, groups, or organizations are plotting to accomplish menacing objectives (van der Linden, 2013; Moscovici, 1987). In the present era, in which fake news and misinformation are spread quickly and easily through social media platforms, belief in conspiracy theories is widespread; it is estimated that more than 50% of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory (Oliver & Wood, 2014). For society, there are many troubling consequences of conspiratorial thinking, including antisocial behavior, hostility against outgroups, rejection of science, decreased trust in government, and a lack of civic engagement (Einstein & Glick, 2015; Flynn, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2017; Jolley & Douglas, 2014; Lewandowsky & Oberauer, 2016; van der Linden, 2015; Swami, 2012; Uscinski & Parent, 2014). Reference.
When you hear the people from QAnon and others tell about their beliefs you may wonder “who the hell are these people” or more specifically you may ask yourself what’s wrong with them. Aside from their outlandish convictions few if any seem to be developmentally disabled. It would appear that our new members of the House of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert can speak at least as well as your average fifth grader.
What then is wrong with these people?
Here’s a possible answer.
There are many studies dating back at least to 2004 that suggest the number on those in the American population with a paranoid diagnosis of clinical significance is around 4.4%.
From 2003: “A Survey of Personality Disorders” in American Family Physician journal.
.Findings of the survey are significant: The most prevalent disorder in the United States is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which affects 7.9 percent of adults (representing approximately 16.4 million persons). Approximately 4.4 percent (9.2 million) have paranoid personality disorder; 3.6 percent (7.6 million) have antisocial personality disorder; 3.1 percent (6.5 million) have schizoid personality disorder; 2.4 percent (4.9 million) have avoidant personality disorder; 1.8 percent (3.8 million) have histrionic personality disorder; and 0.5 percent (1.0 million) have dependent personality disorder.
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More: Don't Freak Out: Paranoia Quite Common — November 12, 2008
Dennis Combs, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Tyler, has been studying paranoia for about a decade. When he first started conducting paranoia studies, mostly in college students, he found that about 5 percent of them had paranoid thoughts.
Even more: Are we all a little paranoid — Scientific American, July 5, 2018
Paranoia was long considered exclusively a marker of severe psychotic states. But today it is seen as a continuum. For example, some people are mildly suspicious that others disapprove of them. Others feel they are being secretly observed. Still others perceive imminent threats from malevolent individuals. Finally, people at the end of the spectrum are convinced that powerful and evil forces are aligned against them (referred to as persecutory delusions, a term popularized by French psychiatrist Henri Legrand du Saulle in 1871). Sometimes these individuals suffer from hallucinations.
Paranoid thinking is estimated to occur regularly in 10 to 15 percent of the general population, and up to 3 percent have paranoid delusions that are comparable in severity to the delusions suffered by patients with schizophrenia. Interestingly, studies based on surveys suggest that people who feel paranoid in one situation often feel that way in other situations as well: if you think that aliens are about to kidnap you, you also tend to think that your co-workers are looking at you a little strangely and that the laughter you hear coming from the cafeteria is about you. It is as though the paranoid ideas join to create a world completely and utterly centered on you—in other words, Josef K.’s world. (Ref. is to character in Kafka’s “The Trial”)
Let’s consider the high end of the above: paranoid thinking is estimated to occur regularly in 10 to 15 percent of the general population. That is far more than a “mere” 9.2 million people.
The next question I expect you may be asking is whether Trump supporters are more paranoid than others. According to this article the answer, in a word, is yes:
Conservatives’ propensity toward conspiracy thinking can be explained by a distrust in officials and paranoid thinking.
Excerpt: .
Van der Linden and colleagues found little evidence to suggest that conspiracy thinking was equally prevalent among liberals and conservatives.
“Extreme liberals were not as likely as extreme conservatives to adopt a conspiratorial mindset, although it is possible that extreme liberals would be more motivated than moderate liberals to embrace some conspiracy theories . . . Importantly, this pattern of ideological asymmetry applied to conspiratorial thinking in general as well as belief in an ideologically congenial conspiracy theory, namely, the conspiracy theory that global warming is a hoax,” the researchers share.
There have always been two primary groups of ardent Trump supports as exemplified by this we’ve seen at his rallies. They seem to be mostly discreet groups. One is composed of the abject racists and the other are those who are clinically paranoid. In oder to mitigate their influence you must deal with them in different ways. I addressed this on Wednesday here:
I am not an expert in this so I will leave the solutions to those who are.
Update: There are numerous comments below which serve to be relevant addendums to this article.