The nature of emotional blunting: a factor-analytic study

To investigate the components of emotional blunting, we factor-analyzed an emotional blunting scale, and examined the relationships between the derived factors and several clinical variables in two patient samples. Two factors were identified, corresponding to "lack of emotional expression" and "avolition". The "avolition" factor was strongly related to clinical improvement after treatment. Discriminant analyses indicated that schizophrenics could be differentiated from manics by emotional expression and from depressives by avolition. Scores on two shorter scales derived from the factors were also highly predictive of clinical improvement and diagnosis. These results indicate that emotional blunting can be differentiated into two easily measured components which may have different clinical significance.