Affect and pleasure in social contexts among patients with schizophrenia and negative symptoms: An ecological...

Social anhedonia is an essential part of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), as well as a part of the negative symptom domain. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has emerged as a valuable method for assessing momentary emotional experiences in daily life of patients with negative symptoms, while minimizing retrospective reporting bias. However, few EMA studies have examined how patients with SSD and negative symptoms experience social contexts, and findings are inconsistent. The present study aimed to extend this line of research by examining associations between social context and positive affect, negative affect, and pleasure in patients with SSD and prominent negative symptoms.

Twenty-six participants with SSD completed one week of EMA assessments. Repeated momentary ratings of social context, affect, and pleasure were collected, and multilevel analyses were conducted to examine within-person associations between social context and emotional experience.

Participants reported significantly greater positive affect in social contexts compared to non-social contexts. In contrast, social context was not significantly associated with negative affect or consummatory pleasure. Time lagged analyses of experienced affect following a social context were not significant, and social context did not moderate the association between anticipatory and consummatory pleasure.

The findings suggest that patients with SSD and prominent negative symptoms experience greater positive affect in social contexts compared to being alone, without corresponding increases in consummatory pleasure, highlighting a potential dissociation between affective and hedonic processes in daily social experiences.