Editing Paranoia (section)

===Situational antecedents===
Perceived social distinctiveness, perceived evaluative scrutiny and uncertainty about the social standing.
*Perceived social distinctiveness: According to the [[social identity theory]],<ref name=Turner87>Turner, J. (1987). ''Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.</ref> people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances.<ref name=Cota86>Cota, A. A., & Dion, K. L. (1986). "Salience of gender and sex composition of ad-hoc groups: An experimental test of distinctiveness theory." ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 50, 770 – 776.</ref><ref name=Turner87/> Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain people's behavior when these attributes make them unique in a social group. This distinctive attribute may have influence not only in how people are perceived, but may also affect the way they perceive themselves. 
*Perceived evaluative scrutiny: According to this model, dysphoric self-consciousness may increase when people feel under moderate or intensive evaluative social scrutiny such as when an asymmetric relationship is analyzed. For example, when asked about relationships, doctoral students remembered events that they interpreted as significant to their degree of trust in their advisors when compared with their advisors. This suggests that students are willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is to them. Also, students spent more time ruminating about behaviors, events, and their relationship in general.{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}}
*Uncertainty about social standing: Knowledge about social standing is another factor that may induce paranoid social cognition. Many researchers have argued that experiencing uncertainty about a social position in a social system constitutes an adverse psychological state, one which people are highly motivated to reduce.