The impact of social content and negative symptoms on affective ratings in schizophrenia

The anhedonia paradox has been a topic of ongoing study in schizophrenia. Previous research has found that schizophrenia patients report less enjoyment from various activities when compared to their healthy counterparts; however, the two groups appear to have similar in-the-moment emotional ratings of these events (Gard et al., 2007; Herbener et al., 2007; Horan et al., 2006). This study examined these in-the-moment experiences further, by assessing whether they differed between social and non-social experiences. The data were collected from 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 53 matched healthy controls in the greater Chicago area. In-the-moment emotional experience was measured by self-reported arousal and valence ratings for social and non-social stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Clinical ratings for patients were gathered by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A series of ANOVAs revealed that controls were more aroused by the social than nonsocial unpleasant stimuli, whereas patients did not show this distinction. Further, regression analyses revealed that negative symptom severity uniquely predicted lower arousal responses to unpleasant social, but not nonsocial, stimuli. Our results indicate that both subject and stimulus factors appear to contribute to differences in emotional responses in individuals with schizophrenia.