Cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation: Dual layers of resilience against the emergence of paranoia

Cognitive inflexibility has been linked to difficulties in revising paranoid beliefs, whereas cognitive flexibility may protect against the development and maintenance of paranoid beliefs by allowing for troubleshooting in light of available evidence. While less discussed in the context of paranoia research, better regulation of affective states may reduce the likelihood of biased beliefs developing in the first place, reducing the burden on belief updating mechanisms. The present study hypothesized that high cognitive flexibility and strong emotion regulation ability may act as a reciprocal protective shield against the risk associated with lower ability in the other domain. Participants were recruited from the general population (N = 221) to complete the Ambiguous Interpretation Inflexibility Task, as well as self-report measures for paranoia and emotion regulation ability. The results show an interaction between cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation ability as related to less severe paranoia. Better emotion regulation ability is associated with lower paranoia in individuals with lower cognitive flexibility, whereas higher cognitive flexibility is associated with less severe paranoia in individuals with greater emotion regulation difficulties. These findings highlight the importance of emotion regulation in early interventions of paranoia, especially how emotion regulation relates to known cognitive vulnerabilities such as inflexibility.