Fig. 4: Sabotage belief and the effects of lockdown (social task; n = 280).
From: Paranoia and belief updating during the COVID-19 crisis
a, Sabotage belief, the conviction that an avatar-partner deliberately caused a loss in points, increased from prelockdown to reopening (t145 = −2.35, P = 0.02, Cohen’s d = 0.349, 95% CI = −1.114 to −0.096). b, Self-rated paranoia in the real world correlated with sabotage belief in the task (Fig. 3b; r = 0.4, P < 0.001). During lockdown, when proactive state responses were associated with decreased self-rated paranoia, the win-switch rate (t216 = 2.73, P = 0.014, Cohen’s d = 0.351, 95% CI = 0.019–0.117) and 𝝁30 (t223 = 4.20, P < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 4.299, 95% CI = 0–1.647) were significantly lower in participants from states with more vigorous lockdown. Analysis was performed on individuals who responded to the sabotage question. The centre horizontal lines within the plots represent the median values, the boxes span from the 25th to the 75th percentile and the whiskers extend to 1.5× the interquartile range. The grey shaded region in b (leftmost graph) represents the 95% confidence interval for predictions from a linear model.
