Social Cognition among People with Schizophrenia: An Information Integration Perspective

Etienne Mullet,Henri Chabrol,Stéphanie Ruffié

doi:10.11144/javeriana.upsy18-2.scap

Abstract

We examined whether the ability to integrate social information among people with schizophrenia (PWS) differed from that of healthy people. Four social cognition task implying information integration were selected: (a) judging the level of success of a student to an exam as a function of this student’s known level of capacity and the time spent at preparing for the exam, (b) judging the level of blame deserved by an aggressor as a function of the severity of the act committed and its level of intentionality, (c) judging one’s personal level of willingness to forgive a transgression as a function of the extent to which its consequences still persist and the quality of the transgressor’s apologies, and (d) judging one’s personal level of adherence to a medical treatment as a function of the severity of pain experienced and the existence of undesirable side effects. PWS’s pattern of responses in the performance task, in the blame attribution task, and the adherence to treatment task were indistinguishable from the healthy participants’ one. In the willingness to forgive task, however, the information on consequences (an inverse effect cue) was given less weight during the judgment process among PWS than among controls whereas the information on apologies (a direct effect cue) was given more weight. Once PWS have been stabilized, their integrative capacities are, therefore, largely preserved.

Highlights

We examined whether the ability to integrate social information among people with schizophrenia (PWS) differed from that of healthy people
As social cognition implies information integration (Anderson, 2008, 2016), we examined whether PWS’s ability to integrate social information differed from that of healthy people
Social Cognition among People with Schizophrenia: An Information Integration Perspective judging the level of blame deserved by an aggressor as a function of the severity of the act committed and its level of intentionality, (c) judging one’s personal level of willingness to forgive a transgression as a function of the extent to which its consequences still persist and the quality of the transgressor’s apologies, and (d) judging one’s personal level of adherence to a medical treatment as a function of the severity of pain experienced and the existence of undesirable side effects

Summary

Participants

The second series depicted a situation in which a person has been more or less intentionally (two intent levels) and more or less severely harmed (three severity levels) by another person. An example of story is the following: “John has committed a harmful act against Richard. If you were Richard, to what extent would you be willing to forgive John?” Responses were given using a continuous scale ranging from Completely unwilling to forgive (1) to Completely willing to forgive (14). To what extent do you think that you would take the drug?” Responses were given using a continuous scale ranging from Sure I would not take it (1) to Sure I would take it (14). To what extent do you think that you would take the drug?” Responses were given using a continuous scale ranging from Sure I would not take it (1) to Sure I would take it (14). (The complete set of scenarios is available from the authors.)

Procedure

Results

Discussion