In an attempt to test this prediction, Peter Kinderman, Robin Dunbar and I administered a ToM measure and also a measure of attributional style to a large group of students.28 As we had predicted, students who performed relatively poorly on our ToM task made more paranoid-style external-personal attributions than students who performed well, a finding that has since been replicated.29 Obviously, this study was limited by our use of students, rather than of people who were actually suffering from psychiatric symptoms. The necessary studies of the relationship between ToM skills and attributions
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