Social Trait Judgment and Affect Recognition from Static Faces and Video Vignettes in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Previous research has shown impairment in affect recognition in individuals with schizophrenia. Poor affect recognition has been associated with more severe clinical symptoms and poor social functioning. The current body of literature has not properly addressed more complex social judgments made by schizophrenics. The present study combined an affect recognition task with a social trait judgment task, using a combination of emotional faces and short video vignettes. Patients showed a general impairment in affect recognition. However, as a group, schizophrenic patients did not make significantly different judgments of trustworthiness, approachability, attractiveness, and intelligence, from either stimulus, relative to the control group. We found evidence for a positive bias in trait attribution to static faces in patients with more severe positive symptoms, particularly delusions. These findings suggest that the ability to integrate nonverbal cues for trait judgment is largely intact, but when there are few nonverbal cues to draw from in judgment formation, a positive bias in more symptomatic patients is shown for some types of judgments.