Abnormal emotional experience in schizophrenia

Abstract

Ambivalence is defined as the state of simultaneously experiencing antithetical emotions towards a single attitude object (Bleuler, 1911/1950). Recent studies have evidenced ambivalence as a prominent aspect of schizophrenia patients’ in-the-moment emotional experiences (Cohen & Minor, 2010; Trémeau et al., 2009). The present study extended this line of work through the use of an experimental mood-induction methodology to explore the amount, frequency, and average duration of univalent positive, negative, and ambivalent emotional episodes within individuals with schizophrenia and those without psychiatric disturbance. The results indicate that, when exposed to a film clip stimulus selected for its documented (Larsen & McGraw, 2011) capacity to induce ambivalent emotions, individuals with and without schizophrenia do not reliably differ in any measured dimension of univalent or ambivalent emotional experience. Potential explanations for observed inconsistencies in the schizophrenia emotional experience literature are reviewed and study limitations as well as directions for future research are discussed.