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There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field’s investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women’s career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

Anhedonia is central to several psychological disorders and a frequent target of psychosocial and pharmacological treatments. We evaluated the psychometric properties of two widely used anhedonia measures derived from the Beck Depression Inventory: a 3-item (BDI-Anh3) and a 4-item version (BDI-Anh4). We evaluated these measures in a large undergraduate sample, a community sample, and a clinical sample. Both the BDI-Anh3 and the BDI-Anh4 showed adequate internal consistency, with BDI-Anh4 performing somewhat better, across the three samples. Both measures showed good convergent and discriminant validity, even after controlling for shared variance with other items on the BDI. These findings indicate that both measures have sufficient reliability and validity to support their use by researchers and clinicians.

Background Social engagement-important for health and well-being-can be difficult for people with schizophrenia. Past research indicates that despite expressing interest in social interactions, people with schizophrenia report spending less time with others and feeling lonely. Social motivations and barriers may play an important role for understanding social engagement in schizophrenia. Aim To investigate how people with schizophrenia describe factors that impede and promote social engagement. Methods We interviewed a community sample of people with (n = 35) and without (n = 27) schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder about their social interactions with friends and family over the past week and planned social activities for the coming week. We reviewed the interview transcripts and developed a novel coding system to capture whether interactions occurred, who had initiated the contact, and frequency of reported social barriers (i.e., internal, conflict-based, logistical) and social motivations (i.e., instrumental, affiliative, obligation-based). We also assessed symptoms and functioning. Results People with schizophrenia were less likely than people without schizophrenia to have spent time with friends [t (51.04) = 2.09, P = 0.042, d = 0.51)], but not family. People with schizophrenia reported more social barriers than people without schizophrenia [F (1, 60) = 10.55, P = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.15)] but did not differ in reported social motivations. Specifically, people with schizophrenia reported more internal [t (45.75) = 3.40, P = 0.001, d = 0.83)] and conflict-based [t (40.11) = 3.03, P = 0.004, d = 0.73)] barriers than people without schizophrenia. Social barriers and motivations were related to real-world social functioning for people with schizophrenia, such that more barriers were associated with more difficulty in close relationships (r = -0.37, P = 0.027) and more motivations were associated with better community functioning (r = 0.38, P = 0.024). Conclusion These findings highlight the importance of assessing first person accounts of social barriers and motivations to better understand social engagement in schizophrenia.

Objectives Emotion deficits are well documented in people with schizophrenia. Far less is known about their ability to implement emotion regulation strategies. We sought to explore whether people with schizophrenia can modify their emotion responses similar to controls. Methods People with (n = 25) and without (n = 21) schizophrenia were instructed to amplify positive-emotion expression, reappraise negative emotion experience, and suppress physiological response. Multiple components of emotion response were measured (experience, expression, and physiology). Results Although people with schizophrenia showed increased positive expressivity following amplification and decreased negative emotion experience following reappraisal, overall, they expressed less positive emotion and experienced more negative emotion compared with controls. Neither group was effective at physiological suppression. Conclusions Together these findings suggest that people with schizophrenia can engage in amplification and reappraisal when explicitly instructed to do so, albeit additional practice may be necessary to modify emotion responses to levels similar to controls.

Previous research has revealed anticipatory pleasure deficits in people with schizophrenia and people with social anhedonia but who do not have schizophrenia. Prospection is an important component of anticipatory pleasure, but little is known about the role of prospection in social anhedonia. In 2 studies, we investigated prospection and anticipatory pleasure in people with schizophrenia and people with social anhedonia using an affective prospection task and a self-report measure, the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS). In Study 1, we found that people with schizophrenia (n = 31) reported less TEPS anticipatory pleasure, generated less rich and vivid prospections, and reported less preexperiencing of future events than people without schizophrenia (n = 29). In Study 2, we found that people with social anhedonia (n = 34) reported less TEPS anticipatory pleasure, generated less rich prospections, and reported less pleasure and preexperiencing for future events than people without social anhedonia (n = 33). Taken together, prospection impairments and decreased anticipatory pleasure were observed in schizophrenia and social anhedonia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) is a self-report instrument that assesses pleasure experience. Initial scale development and validation in the United States yielded a two-factor solution comprising anticipatory and consummatory pleasure. However, a four-factor model that further parsed anticipatory and consummatory pleasure experience into abstract and contextual components was a better model fit in China. In this study, we tested both models using confirmatory factor analysis in an American and a Chinese sample and examined the configural measurement invariance of both models across culture. We also examined the temporal stability of the four-factor model in the Chinese sample. The results indicated that the four-factor model of the TEPS was a better fit than the two-factor model in the Chinese sample. In contrast, both models fit the American sample, which also included many Asian American participants. The four-factor model fit both the Asian American and Chinese samples equally well. Finally, the four-factor model demonstrated good measurement and structural invariance across culture and time, suggesting that this model may be applicable in both cross-cultural and longitudinal studies.

While recent research suggests that people with schizophrenia anticipate less pleasure for non-social events, considerably less is known about anticipated pleasure for social events. In this study, we investigated whether people with and without schizophrenia differ in the amount and updating of anticipated pleasure over the course of repeated interactions as well as the influence of emotional displays. Thirty-two people with schizophrenia and 29 controls rated their anticipated pleasure over the course of repeated interactions with smiling, scowling, or neutral social partners that had either positive or negative outcomes. Compared to controls, people with schizophrenia anticipated a lower amount of pleasure during interactions with smiling, but not neutral social partners that had positive outcomes. However, the groups did not differ in the amount or updating of anticipated pleasure during interactions that had negative outcomes. Both groups anticipated more pleasure over the course of repeated interactions with smiling partners and less pleasure over the course of repeated interactions with scowling partners compared to interactions with neutral partners. We discuss how less anticipated pleasure for interactions with smiling social partners may be linked to difficulties in social engagement among people with schizophrenia.

This chapter will summarise the latest advances in our understanding of the emotional and motivational difficulties of people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and how this research is transforming assessment of negative symptoms. Readers will learn about the key domains of negative of symptoms in different phases of illness in people with psychotic disorders, including deficits in motivation, pleasure, and expressivity, and the relevance of these problems for daily social functioning and quality of life. The chapter will also review and critique the merits and limitations (e.g. the domains covered, administration and time, need for informants, sensitivity to change) of older and newer tools for the clinical assessment of negative symptoms (including clinician rated and self-report instruments), and the uncertainties that remain, including the lack of clear boundaries with other components of illness. Practical strategies and guidance will be provided to help trainees sharpen their skills when assessing and differentiating negative symptoms from other symptoms/issues (such as depression, social functioning, or medication effects).

Objective: Dysfunction in positive affect is a defining symptom of bipolar I disorder (BD), both during and between mood episodes. We hypothesize that helping people with BD learn skills to create balance in their affective experiences by engaging in strategies that increase low activation positive emotion (LAP; e.g., relaxation) could help to improve well-being during periods of symptom remission. We discuss the development and preliminary outcomes of a positive emotion regulation (PER) group treatment for people with BD, designed as a supplement to pharmacological treatment. Method: The Learning Affective Understanding for a Rich Emotional Life (LAUREL) intervention is a group-based intervention covering 10 empirically supported skills designed to increase LAP. Sixteen people with BD enrolled in the LAUREL intervention and twelve completed baseline and post-intervention assessments. Results: Participants who completed the study (n = 12) attended the majority of groups (87.96%) and reported practicing skills, on average, 16 times a week. We were unable to detect significant differences in mania symptoms following engagement in this PER intervention. Finally, participants reported increases in several areas associated with well-being post-intervention, including mindfulness, reappraisal, and self-compassion. Conclusion: This study provides a theoretical framework and preliminary support for a PER intervention for BD.

Defeatist performance beliefs are prevalent and linked to decreased motivation in people with psychological disorders. In this study, we investigated whether defeatist performance beliefs were associated with transdiagnostic psychopathology risk in people with no history of formal diagnosis and whether defeatist performance beliefs impacted engagement in daily goal-directed behavior. One hundred and two college students completed self-report measures of defeatist performance beliefs and risk for depression, mania, and psychosis. Sixty-one of these participants were randomly selected to identify a goal and complete daily surveys about their actual and expected goal progress, effort expenditure, experienced pleasure, and difficulty of goal pursuit. We found that greater defeatist performance beliefs were associated with higher risk for depression, mania, and psychosis. Using multilevel modeling, we found that greater defeatist performance beliefs predicted less goal progress, effort expenditure, and pleasure from goal pursuit. Together, these findings suggest that defeatist performance beliefs may impact goal-directed behavior in healthy people with no reported psychiatric history. Interventions targeting defeatist performance beliefs may have utility for actual goal-directed behavior in many people, regardless of psychiatric status.

Many people with schizophrenia have the symptom of anhedonia, which refers to diminished experience of pleasure. Interestingly, however, one of the most well-replicated affective science findings in schizophrenia is that people with schizophrenia report experiencing similar (or slightly less) amounts of pleasure and positive emotion compared to those without schizophrenia in the presence of emotionally evocative stimuli (e.g., films, food) and in daily life. If people with schizophrenia experience pleasure and positive emotion, how can they have anhedonia? Our research has shown that people with schizophrenia report expecting less pleasure from enjoyable activities, and experience less pleasure when anticipating future events, than people without schizophrenia. However, when participating in pleasant activities, people with and without schizophrenia report experiencing the same amount of pleasure. The example of anhedonia in schizophrenia illustrates the multifaceted nature of pleasure, showing that it emerges from interacting cognitive, affective, and motivational systems.

© 2016 American Psychological Association.The outcomes of the decisions we make can be used to inform subsequent choices and behavior. We investigated whether and how people with and without schizophrenia use positive and negative social outcomes and emotional displays to inform decisions to place trust in social partners. We also investigated the impact of reversals in social partners' behavior on decisions to trust. Thirty-two people with schizophrenia and 29 control participants completed a task in which they decided how much trust to place in social partners' showing either a dynamic emotional (smiling, scowling) or neutral display. Interactions were predetermined to result in positive (trust reciprocated) or negative (trust abused) outcomes, and we modeled changes in trust decisions over the course of repeated interactions. Compared to controls, people with schizophrenia were less sensitive to positive social outcomes in that they placed less trust in trustworthy social partners during initial interactions. By contrast, people with schizophrenia were more sensitive to negative social outcomes during initial interactions with untrustworthy social partners, placing less trust in these partners compared to controls. People with schizophrenia did not differ from controls in detecting social partner behavior reversals from trustworthy to untrustworthy; however, they had difficulties detecting reversals from untrustworthy to trustworthy. Importantly, decisions to trust were associated with real-world social functioning. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding social engagement among people with schizophrenia and the development of psychosocial interventions for social functioning.

While people with schizophrenia report experiencing as much emotion in the presence of emotionally evocative stimuli as do people without schizophrenia, evidence suggests that they have deficits in the anticipation of positive emotion. However, little is known about the anticipation of negative emotion in schizophrenia, thus leaving open whether anticipation deficits are more general. We sought to assess anticipation of positive and negative stimuli across multiple methods of measurement. We measured reported experience and emotion-modulated startle response in people with ( n = 27) and without ( n = 27) schizophrenia as they anticipated and subsequently viewed evocative pictures. People with schizophrenia showed an overall dampened response during the anticipation of positive and negative stimuli, suggesting a more general deficit in anticipatory emotional responses. Moreover, anticipatory responses were related to symptoms and functioning in people with schizophrenia. Together, these findings point to important new directions for understanding emotion deficits in schizophrenia

The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) is a self-report instrument that assesses pleasure experience. Initial scale development and validation in the United States yielded a two-factor solution comprising anticipatory and consummatory pleasure. However, a four-factor model that further parsed anticipatory and consummatory pleasure experience into abstract and contextual components was a better model fit in China. In this study, we tested both models using confirmatory factor analysis in an American and a Chinese sample and examined the configural measurement invariance of both models across culture. We also examined the temporal stability of the four-factor model in the Chinese sample. The results indicated that the four-factor model of the TEPS was a better fit than the two-factor model in the Chinese sample. In contrast, both models fit the American sample, which also included many Asian American participants. The four-factor model fit both the Asian American and Chinese samples equally well. Finally, the four-factor model demonstrated good measurement and structural invariance across culture and time, suggesting that this model may be applicable in both cross-cultural and longitudinal studies.

Clinicians and researchers have long known that one of the debilitating aspects of psychotic disorders is the presence of "negative symptoms," which involve impairments in hedonic and motivational function, and/or alterations in expressive affect. We have a number of excellent clinical tools available for assessing the presence and severity of negative symptoms. However, to better understand the mechanisms that may give rise to negative symptoms, we need tools and methods that can help distinguish among different potential contributing causes, as a means to develop more targeted intervention pathways. Using such paradigms is particularly important if we wish to understand whether the causes are the same or different across disorders that may share surface features of negative symptoms. This approach is in line with the goals of the Research Diagnostic Criteria Initiative, which advocates understanding the nature of core dimensions of brain-behavior relationships transdiagnostically. Here we highlight some of the emerging measures and paradigms that may help us to parse the nature and causes of negative symptoms, illustrating both the research approaches from which they emerge and the types of constructs that they can help elucidate.

Motivational and hedonic impairments are core features of a variety of types of psychopathology. An important aspect of motivational function is reinforcement learning (RL), including implicit (i.e., outside of conscious awareness) and explicit (i.e., including explicit representations about potential reward associations) learning, as well as both positive reinforcement (learning about actions that lead to reward) and punishment (learning to avoid actions that lead to loss). Here we present data from paradigms designed to assess both positive and negative components of both implicit and explicit RL, examine performance on each of these tasks among individuals with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder with psychosis, and examine their relative relationships to specific symptom domains transdiagnostically. None of the diagnostic groups differed significantly from controls on the implicit RL tasks in either bias toward a rewarded response or bias away from a punished response. However, on the explicit RL task, both the individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder performed significantly worse than controls, but the individuals with bipolar did not. Worse performance on the explicit RL task, but not the implicit RL task, was related to worse motivation and pleasure symptoms across all diagnostic categories. Performance on explicit RL, but not implicit RL, was related to working memory, which accounted for some of the diagnostic group differences. However, working memory did not account for the relationship of explicit RL to motivation and pleasure symptoms. These findings suggest transdiagnostic relationships across the spectrum of psychotic disorders between motivation and pleasure impairments and explicit RL. (PsycINFO Database Record

Schizophrenia is associated with motivational deficits that interfere with a wide range of goal directed activities. Despite their clinical importance, our current understanding of these motivational impairments is limited. Furthermore, different types of motivational problems are commonly seen among individuals within the broad diagnosis of schizophrenia. The goal of the current study was to examine whether clinically meaningful subgroups could be identified based on approach and avoidance motivational tendencies. We measured these tendencies in 151 individuals with schizophrenia. Although prior studies demonstrate elevated BIS sensitivity in schizophrenia at the overall group level, none have explored various combinations of BIS/BAS sensitivities within this disorder. Cluster analyses yielded five subgroups with different combinations of low, moderate, or high BIS and BAS. The subgroups had interpretable differences in clinically rated negative symptoms and self-reported anhedonia/socio-emotional attitudes, which were not detectable with the more commonly used linear BIS/BAS scores. Two of the subgroups had significantly elevated negative symptoms but different approach/avoidance profiles: one was characterized by markedly low BIS, low BAS and an overall lack of social approach motivation; the other had markedly high BIS but moderate BAS and elevated social avoidance motivation. The two subgroups with relatively good clinical functioning showed patterns of BAS greater than BIS. Our findings indicate that there are distinct motivational pathways that can lead to asociality in schizophrenia and highlight the value of considering profiles based on combined patterns of BIS and BAS in schizophrenia.

A range of emotional and motivation impairments have long been clinically documented in people with schizophrenia, and there has been a resurgence of interest in understanding the psychological and neural mechanisms of the so-called “negative symptoms” in schizophrenia, given their lack of treatment responsiveness and their role in constraining function and life satisfaction in this illness. Negative symptoms comprise two domains, with the first covering diminished motivation and pleasure across a range of life domains and the second covering diminished verbal and non-verbal expression and communicative output. In this review, we focus on four aspects of the motivation/pleasure domain, providing a brief review of the behavioral and neural underpinnings of this domain. First, we cover liking or in-the-moment pleasure: immediate responses to pleasurable stimuli. Second, we cover anticipatory pleasure or wanting, which involves prediction of a forthcoming enjoyable outcome (reward) and feeling pleasure in anticipation of that outcome. Third, we address motivation, which comprises effort computation, which involves figuring out how much effort is needed to achieve a desired outcome, planning, and behavioral response. Finally, we cover the maintenance emotional states and behavioral responses. Throughout, we consider the behavioral manifestations and brain representations of these four aspects of motivation/pleasure deficits in schizophrenia. We conclude with directions for future research as well as implications for treatment.

Objective Emotion regulation is posited to be disrupted in eating disorders, but studies have yet to examine the linkage between eating disorder symptoms and emotion regulation strategy use in daily life. We conducted an experience sampling study investigating associations between trait-level difficulties with emotion regulation, daily emotion regulation strategy use, and eating disorder symptoms in daily life. Method Fifty-three undergraduate women completed a trait-level measure of difficulties with emotion regulation, then reported their use of emotion regulation strategies four times per day for seven days. At the end of each day, they also reported daily disordered eating symptoms and behaviors. Results Reduced access to emotion regulation strategies at the trait-level was associated with dimensional eating disorder symptoms and food restriction across the study period. In addition, greater use of maladaptive strategies and attentional deployment and less use of adaptive strategies on a given day were associated with a higher likelihood of food restriction on that day. Moderation analyses based on baseline eating disorder symptoms indicated that associations were consistent across symptom severity. Conclusions These findings suggest that certain eating disorder symptoms are associated with difficulties in regulating emotions at the trait-level and in daily life.

Although current treatments help to alleviate some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, people with schizophrenia often continue to experience residual symptoms. An emotion-focused treatment approach may help to improve well-being in this population by increasing positive experiences and resources. In this article, we discuss the feasibility and acceptability of a skills-based group treatment for people schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. As part of the Awareness and Coping with Emotion in Schizophrenia (ACES) intervention, group members learned eight empirically supported cognitive and behavioural skills covering emotional awareness and coping. Group member feedback and three case illustrations illuminate participants’ experiences with the group, as well as the potential benefits and challenges of this treatment approach. These data suggest that ACES is a feasible and acceptable group intervention. Future research is needed to examine whether ACES has a selective impact on well-being, but these initial findings point to the promise of this intervention to improve quality of life for individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, thus filling a void in existing treatments options.

OBJECTIVE: Deficits in anticipatory pleasure have been consistently shown among chronic, first-episode, and clinical high risk for psychosis populations, but much less attention has been given to non-clinical individuals experiencing attenuated positive psychotic symptoms (APPS). METHOD: Young adults (N = 1,839) were administered the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS), which measures anticipatory and consummatory pleasure, and the Prodromal Questionnaire, which measures APPS. Analyses examined (a) total APPS endorsed, and (b) comparisons of groups experiencing APPS that were endorsed as distressing (distressing APPS = D-APPS; experiencing more D-APPS = High-D-APPS, a potentially more clinically meaningful group; experiencing fewer D-APPS = Low-D-APPS). RESULTS: Results indicated that anticipatory, but not consummatory, pleasure deficits were associated with elevated APPS. Additionally, the High-D-APPS group exhibited significantly less anticipatory pleasure compared with the Low-D-APPS group, but did not differ in consummatory pleasure. DISCUSSION: Our results mirror findings in schizophrenia samples and suggest that anticipatory pleasure deficits occur along the entire continuum of psychotic experiences.

Research on emotion perception in schizophrenia has focused primarily on the perception of static faces displaying different emotion signals or expressions. However, perception of emotion in daily life relies on much more than just the face. In this article, we review the role of context in emotion perception among people with and without schizophrenia. We argue that not only is context central to the perception of emotion, it in fact helps to construct the perception. Implications for future research on emotion perception are discussed.

article i nfo Progress in the development of new pharmacological and psychosocial treatments for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia is impeded by limitations of available assessment instruments. The multi-site Collaboration to Advance Negative Symptom Assessment in Schizophrenia (CANSAS) was established to develop and validate a new clinical rating scale using a transparent, iterative, and data-driven process. The Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS) was designed to address limitations of existing measures and assess consensus-based sub-domains, including asociality, avolition, anhedonia, affective blunting, and alogia. The structure and psychometric properties of the CAINS were evaluated in a sample of 281 schizophrenia and schizoaffective outpatients at four sites. Converging structural analyses indicated that the scale was comprised of two moderately correlated factors — one reflecting experiential impairments (diminished motivation and enjoyment of social, vocational, and recreational activities) and one reflecting expressive impairments (diminished non-verbal and verbal communication). Item-level analyses revealed generally good distributional properties, inter-rater agreement, discriminating anchor points, and preliminary convergent and discriminant validity. Results indicate that the CAINS is a promising new measure for quantifying negative symptoms in clinical neuroscience and treatment studies. Results guided item modification or deletion, and the reliability and validity of the revised, shorter version of the CAINS is in the final phase of development within the CANSAS project. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This pilot study examined loving-kindness meditation (LKM) with 18 participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and significant negative symptoms. Findings indicate that the intervention was feasible and associated with decreased negative symptoms and increased positive emotions and psychological recovery.

As part of an ongoing scale development process, this study provides an initial examination of the psychometric properties and validity of a new interview-based negative symptom instrument, the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS), in outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (N = 37). The scale was designed to address limitations of existing measures and to comprehensively assess five consensus-based negative symptoms: asociality, avolition, anhedonia (consummatory and anticipatory), affective flattening, and alogia. Results indicated satisfactory internal consistency reliability for the total CAINS scale score and promising inter-rater agreement, with clear areas identified in need of improvement. Convergent validity was evident in general agreement between the CAINS and alternative negative symptom measures. Further, CAINS subscales significantly correlated with relevant self-report emotional experience measures as well as with social functioning. Discriminant validity of the CAINS was strongly supported by its small, non-significant relations with positive symptoms, general psychiatric symptoms, and depression. These preliminary data on an early beta-version of the CAINS provide initial support for this new assessment approach to negative symptoms and suggest directions for further scale development.

Deficits in anticipation are implicated across a variety of cognitive and emotional processes in schizophrenia. Although diminished anticipatory Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been detected during tasks requiring motor response preparation in schizophrenia, no prior ERP study has examined non-motor-related anticipatory processes or used motivationally engaging stimuli. Thirty-four schizophrenia outpatients and 36 healthy controls completed a cued, reaction-time contingent picture viewing task to assess two types of anticipatory ERP's, one involving motor response preparation (Contingent Negative Variation [CNV]) and one not involving motor preparation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity [SPN]). The ERP paradigm included emotional and non-emotional pictures, and participants also completed trait anhedonia questionnaires. Patients and controls demonstrated similar patterns of reaction time and self-reported emotional responses to the pictures. However, patients demonstrated generally lower CNV and SPN across pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant picture conditions. Patients also reported lower anticipatory pleasure than controls on a trait questionnaire. Schizophrenia patients demonstrate diminished motor- and non-motor-related anticipatory processing, which may have wide-ranging adverse functional consequences.

Research on emotion and psychopathology has blossomed due in part to the translation of affective science theory and methods to the study of diverse disorders. This translational approach has helped the field to hone in more precisely on the nature of emotion deficits to identify antecedent causes and maintaining processes, and to develop promising new interventions. The future of emotion research in psychopathology will benefit from three inter-related areas, including an emphasis on emotion difficulties that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries (i.e., a transdiagnostic approach), the explicit linking of emotion and cognition in behavioral and neuroimaging studies in psychopathology, and continued translation of the latest conceptualizations of emotion to the study of psychopathology.

Depression and dysphoria have been characterised by dampened positive emotional experiences. However, it remains unclear whether dysphoria is also characterised by dampened expectancies about positive emotional experiences. In the present study, participants with (dysphoric group; n=36) and without (non-dysphoric group; n=36) dysphoria reported on their expected and actual emotional responses to winning and losing money in a computer task. Results showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced less happiness and contentment after winning money than the non-dysphoric group. Results also showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced as much negative emotion after losing money as the non-dysphoric group. Moreover, the dysphoric group predicted they would experience more happiness after winning money than they actually did, whereas the non-dysphoric group experienced as much happiness as they had predicted. Results suggest that disturbances in positive emotional responding are characteristic of p...

In this article, we describe the clinical applicability of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) to individuals suffering from schizophrenia-spectrum disorders with persistent negative symptoms. LKM may have potential for reducing negative symptoms such as anhedonia, avolition, and asociality while enhancing factors consistent with psychological recovery such as hope and purpose in life. Case studies will illustrate how to conduct this group treatment with clients with negative symptoms, the potential benefits to the client, and difficulties that may arise. Although LKM requires further empirical support, it promises to be an important intervention since there are few treatments for clients afflicted with negative symptoms.

Our understanding of the emotional features of schizophrenia has benefited greatly from the adoption of methods and theory from the field of affective science. This article covers basic concepts and methods from affective science on the psychological and neural mechanisms contributing to emotions and reviews the ways in which this research has advanced our understanding of emotional response deficits in schizophrenia. We review naturalistic studies and elicitation studies that evoke emotion responses among participants, including emotion expression, experience, and autonomic physiology. We also consider how these emotion response measures correspond to schizophrenia symptoms, and we focus particular attention on the issue of sex differences in emotional responding and how this may influence our understanding emotional functioning among individuals with schizophrenia.

Anticipatory pleasure deficits have been observed in people with schizophrenia. Less is known about the extent to which interrelated processes that comprise anticipatory pleasure, including memory, prospection, and emotion experience are disrupted. We asked people with (n = 32) and without (n = 29) schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder to provide memory and prospection narratives in response to specific cues. Half of the prospections followed a memory task, and half followed a control task. People with schizophrenia generated memories similar in content and experience as controls even as they described them less clearly. However, people with schizophrenia were less likely to explicitly reference the past in their prospections, and their prospections were less detailed and richly experienced than controls, regardless of the task completed before prospection. People with schizophrenia reported similar levels of positive emotion (current and predicted) in positive prospections that followed the memory task, but less positive emotion than controls in positive prospections that followed the control task. Taken together, these results suggest that people with schizophrenia experience difficulties drawing from past experiences and generating detailed prospections. However, asking people with schizophrenia to recall and describe memories prior to prospection may increase the likelihood of drawing from the past in prospections, and may help boost current and predicted pleasure.

Findings regarding the protective effect of social role functioning on suicide ideation in individuals with schizophrenia have been mixed. One reason for such inconsistencies in the literature may be that individuals with prominent negative symptoms of schizophrenia may not experience a desire for social closeness, and therefore social role functioning may not influence suicide risk in these individuals. The aim of this study was to examine the moderating effects of self-reported desire for social closeness and interviewer-rated negative symptoms on the relationship between social role functioning and suicide ideation. Our sample consisted of 162 individuals who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders; all participants completed self-report questionnaires and clinician-administered interviews, and moderation hypotheses were tested with a non-parametric procedure. The results indicated that motivation and pleasure-related negative symptoms moderated the relationship between social role functioning and suicide ideation; self-reported desire for social closeness and negative symptoms related to expression did not have such a moderating effect. Specifically, better social role functioning was associated with less suicide ideation only in those individuals who had low motivation and pleasure-related negative symptoms; no significant relationship was observed between social role functioning and suicide ideation among those with elevated motivation and pleasure-related negative symptoms. These findings suggest that assessing for negative symptoms and social role functioning may inform suicide risk assessments in individuals with schizophrenia, and improving social role functioning may reduce suicide ideation among those with few motivation and pleasure-related negative symptoms.

A selective review of measures that can be used to assess various aspects of emotional responding during the course of psychotherapy is provided. We pay special attention to measures that index emotion regulation, emotional experience, emotional expression, and emotional awareness across self-report, observer-based, and psychophysiological methods. The review concludes with considerations that should be taken into account when selecting emotion measure(s) for use in psychotherapy research and practice. These considerations include having a clear working definition of emotion, reliability issues that arise when measures reflect a state-dependent construct (e.g., emotional experience), and the potential need to assess more than one component of emotional responding.

Research on anhedonia in schizophrenia has revealed mixed results, with patients reporting greater anhedonia than healthy controls on self-report measures and semi-structured interviews, but also reporting comparable experiences of positive emotions in response to pleasurable stimuli. Basic science points to the importance of distinguishing between anticipatory and consummatory (or in-the-moment) pleasure experiences, and this distinction may help to reconcile the mixed findings on anhedonia in schizophrenia. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that anhedonia in schizophrenia reflects a deficit in anticipatory pleasure but not consummatory pleasure. In Study 1, we used experience sampling methodology to assess reported experiences of consummatory and anticipated pleasure among schizophrenia patients and controls. In Study 2, schizophrenia patients and controls completed a self-report trait measure of anticipatory and consummatory pleasure and interviews that assessed negative symptoms, including anhedonia, and community functioning. In both studies, we found evidence for an anticipatory but not a consummatory pleasure deficit in schizophrenia. In addition, anticipatory pleasure was related to clinical ratings of anhedonia and functional outcome. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.

This study investigated the ability of schizophrenia patients to volitionally display various emotional expressions. Accuracy and intensity of facial and vocal emotional expression were rated in 26 unmedicated male schizophrenia patients and 20 non-patient male controls while posing emotional facial and vocal expressions. Results indicate that schizophrenia patients, compared to non-patient controls, had deficits in their ability to portray some, but not all, emotions. Accuracy and intensity of posed facial and vocal expressions were inversely correlated with negative symptoms in the patient group. We conclude that observable flattened affect in schizophrenia during posed expression is not evident across all emotions. Furthermore, substantial disruption in the ability to portray posed emotions may be largely driven by the presence of negative symptoms.

This article presents information on the development and validation of the Facial Expression Coding System (FACES; A. M. Kring & D. Sloan, 1991). Grounded in a dimensional model of emotion, FACES provides information on the valence (positive, negative) of facial expressive behavior. In 5 studies, reliability and validity data from 13 diverse samples, including students, psychiatric patients, and community adults, are presented, and results indicate that raters can reliably agree on instances of positive and negative expressive behavior. Validity studies indicate that FACES ratings are related in predictable ways to another observational coding system, facial muscle activity, individual-difference measures of expressiveness and personality, skin conductance, heart rate, and reports of experienced emotion. FACES can be a useful tool for assessing expressive behavior in a variety of contexts.

People high in schizotypy, a risk factor for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, can have negative symptoms, including diminished experience of motivation/pleasure (MAP) and emotional expressivity (EXP). Additionally, people high in schizotypy often report elevated depressive symptoms, which are also associated with diminished MAP and EXP. In this study, we examined whether negative symptoms were related to schizotypy above and beyond the presence of depressive symptoms. Thirty-one people high in schizotypy and 24 people low in schizotypy were administered the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS), an interview-based measure of MAP and EXP negative symptoms and completed a self-report measure of cognitive and somatic-affective depressive symptoms. People high in schizotypy had more MAP negative symptoms than people low in schizotypy, but we found no group differences in EXP negative symptoms. Importantly, the relationship between MAP negative symptoms and schizotypy was fully mediated by cognitive depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that depressive symptoms, specifically cognitive depressive symptoms, may be a pathway for motivation and pleasure impairment, in people at elevated risk for developing schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.