Explicit and Implicit Affect and Judgment in Schizotypy

Abstract

Although emotion deficits in schizotypy have been reported, the exact nature of these deficits is now well understood. Specifically, for social anhedonia (SocAnh), there are questions about whether any decrease in positive affect only reflects an explicit bias not observed in other measures (e.g., implicit affect measure). At the same time, for individuals with elevated levels of perceptual aberrations or magical ideation (PerMag), there is some evidence of an increased influence of affect on judgment. It is also possible that the influence of implicit affect on judgment might be especially pronounced in PerMag; however, this has not been previously examined. The current study involved people with elevated levels of SocAnh ( n = 95), elevated levels of PerMag ( n = 62), and people with average or lower levels of both ( n = 246). We found that SocAnh was associated with decreases in both explicit and implicit positive affect. We also found that PerMag was related to stronger relationships between implicit affect, both positive and negative, and a judgment task. These results suggest that decreased positive affect is a core feature of SocAnh and that a heightened influence of affect could be related to the development of peculiar beliefs/experiences associated with PerMag.

Differential emotional abnormalities among schizotypy clusters

“…At the same time, the mixed cluster had a trait PA level in between that of the negative and positive clusters. This is consistent with research showing negative schizotypy is associated with decreased PA while positive schizotypy is associated with similar levels of PA compared to control participants (e.g., Kerns, 2005;Martin et al, 2011Martin et al, , 2018. This is also somewhat consistent with a previous cluster analytic study that reported the mixed cluster had an intermediate level of openness to experience (Barrantes-Vidal et al, 2010), which is correlated with trait PA (e.g., r = .5; Işık and Üzbe, 2015), compared to a positive and negative cluster.…”

Electrophysiological responses to images ranging in motivational salience: Attentional abnormalities associated with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder risk

“…For example, social anhedonia, which is characterized by diminished self-reported experience of positive emotion e.g. [10][11][12] , is associated with decreased self-reported attention to positive emotions 13,14 , as well as decreased influence of emotion on behavioral judgments 12,15 . This suggests that pleasant stimuli might have a reduced motivational salience for individuals with social anhedonia.…”

Investigating the structure of Schizotypy through the “Multidimensional Schizotypy Scale” and “Oxford-Liverpool Inventory”: an Exploratory network analysis approach in the healthy population

“…Two new domains were identified: one defined as "Cognitive and behavioural disorganisation", which was created by merging the items of "Impulsive nonconformity" and "Cognitive disorganisation", showing that rather than divided they can be considered in a symbiotic relationship. Carrying out a proper assessment of environmental aspects such as relationships and the degree of pressure felt by the person on his or her behaviour, can make it possible to discriminate whether such thinking/tracking may also be due to a misinterpretation by the individual, highlighting emotional deficits in the schizotypal personality (Martin et al, 2019).…”