Hostile attribution bias
What it means
A tendency to interpret others’ ambiguous or neutral behaviour as deliberately hostile or threatening — the cognitive style underlying suspiciousness and persecutory beliefs.
Worked example
A man reads his neighbours’ ordinary, neutral actions as proof they are against him.
In the exam
A man is convinced his neighbours dislike him and are out to get him, taking everyday neutral acts — a closed curtain, a brief glance — as clear evidence of their hostility towards him.
What settles it
Hostile attribution bias reads others’ neutral BEHAVIOUR as deliberately hostile. Ideas of reference read neutral EVENTS/objects as personally directed or significant (not necessarily hostile); externalising–personalising is specifically blaming others for bad OUTCOMES.
Classically confused with
Ideas of reference
Source: Dodge; cognitive model of paranoia