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It has been reported in the literature that false memories or memory impairments can be found in individuals with high schizotypal personality traits. However, these studies based their findings exclusively on verbal information. Extending upon prior research, the present study examined whether the recall of recorded number of deaths (numerical information) can reflect a bias that is due to the schizotypal personality traits in a student sample. An online survey was conducted after the first COVID-19 lockdown in France. We assessed recall of deaths numbers, schizotypal personality traits, levels of paranoia, and trauma caused by COVID-19, as well as depression and anxiety scales. Analyses revealed a negative correlation between levels of schizotypal personality scores and the respondents' recall of deaths number announced by official sources, showing that the recall of an objective and numerical information can be also biased by schizotypal personality traits, as much as in episodic memory for verbal information. Expectedly, further analyses revealed that individuals high in schizotypal personality traits believed that real deaths numbers were superior to those announced by official governmental sources, suggesting that people with high schizotypal personality traits lowers the death number announced by official sources in their recall. Implications are discussed both in the field of memory bias studies for schizotypy and in the field of psychopathology for the lack of trust within people with high schizotypal personality and the involuntary nature of this bias.
Public Significance Statement
This study suggests that the recall of a potentially traumatic event, such as a situation involving many deaths in society, can be altered in individuals with schizotypal personality traits within the general population. Our findings suggest that individuals with high schizotypal personality traits tend to recall and interpret very objective phenomena (e.g., the occurrence of deaths) differently, depending on the cognitive-perceptual and interpersonal dimensions of their personality.
Keywords: memory bias, schizotypal personality traits, mistrust, paranoid ideation, self-reported scales
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health is now well-documented (Robinson et al., 2022; Salanti et al., 2022). Despite initial substantial concerns regarding mental health in adults from the general population, a recent meta-analysis showed that changes concerning mental health were of minimal to small magnitudes (Sun et al., 2023). However, distress induced by restrictions and lockdown measures...