Assessing the Paranoid Tendencies of Men and Women in Mauritius - A Comparative Study

The study was undertaken with the purpose of assessing and comparing the level of paranoid tendencies of men and women of Mauritius since it has been observed by the researchers that people have a high level of suspiciousness in everything they do and have difficulties developing trustworthy relationships at all levels. They have a strong tendency to attribute bad things that occurs to them to external cause including the notion that people want to harm them. The study was done on 602 respondents from Mauritius including 295 male and 307 female subjects of age 18 years and above. It was an ex post facto study where data was collected through a questionnaire and a random sampling method was used to determine the representative sample. Results showed that there were no significant differences between the level of suspiciousness of male and female subjects, however, females showed an inclination towards greater paranoid tendencies. A regression model using gender, age, education and socio-professional status was validated for the prediction of paranoid tendencies. Interestingly, individuals from the lower socio-professional status were less affected by paranoia as opposed to those from the higher status. The present findings have critically demonstrated the demographic effect of the Mauritian population with respect to paranoid tendencies, although the extent and progression of such attributes still require further investigation.