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Social isolation has been suggested to foster paranoia. Here we investigate whether social company (i.e., being alone vs. not) and its nature (i.e., stranger/distant vs. familiar other) affects paranoia differently depending on psychosis risk. Social interactions and paranoid thinking in daily life were investigated in 29 patients with clinically stable non-affective psychotic disorders, 20 first-degree relatives, and 26 controls (n = 75), using the experience sampling method (ESM). ESM was completed up to ten times daily for 1 week. Patients experienced marginally greater paranoia than relatives [b = 0.47, p = 0.08, 95% CI (− 0.06, 1.0)] and significantly greater paranoia than controls [b = 0.55, p = 0.03, 95% CI (0.5, 1.0)], but controls and relatives did not differ [b = 0.07, p = 0.78, 95% CI (− 0.47, 0.61)]. Patients were more often alone [68.5% vs. 44.8% and 56.2%, respectively, p = 0.057] and experienced …