What motivates avoidance in paranoia? Three failures to find a betrayal aversion effect

Believing that others intend to harm you (paranoia) is often accompanied by social withdrawal, avoidance and isolation. We investigated whether paranoia is related to betrayal aversion: the tendency to avoid potential harm caused by other people over and above an equivalent harm caused by a non-social mechanism. Across three large-N (Ntotal=2433) pre-registered online studies, we employed a game theoretic paradigm where participants engaged in interactions with real players. Studies 1 and 2 explored betrayal aversion by eliciting participants’ willingness to enter interactions where monetary reward was either determined by another player or a lottery. Study 3 examined betrayal aversion in a context where choices were not financially-incentivised. Paranoia was not associated with betrayal aversion or risk aversion in any study. We consider two possibilities: that paranoia does not involve increased risk aversion or betrayal aversion, or that the paradigm was limited in terms of its ability to trigger betrayal and risk aversion behaviour in paranoia.