How do people become paranoid?

Answer 1

Depends on the situation. Some people's paranoia is justified, other's is not.

Answer 2

Many ways. Mental disorders, such as paranoid schizophrenia or various personality disorders can produce paranoia.

The way many of us normal people become paranoid about something is through conditioning. Either through classical conditioning, where we associate negative stimuli with something that should be seen as non threatening. However, operant conditioning would produce most of our paranoia. In this case, we are rewarded for learning to become afraid of something (something we shouldn't be afraid) in some way.

Such as, if your parents praise your for thinking negativity about immigrants, then you will be conditioned to become paranoid about immigrants. Although the reward system could come from anything and the learned behavior could be anything. Also, this learned behavior could be adaptive or maladaptive, so it wouldn't necessarily be something bad.

Answer 3

I guess they are self conscious and think enough of themselves to believe people would be interested in knowing what they are doing. Also, the government reinforces these feelings by trying to regulate everything about us, usually to get more money and exert power.