A Study of the Judgment of Facial Expressions of Emotion By Schizophrenic Patients

Abstract

The Problem There have been many studies concerning the problem of the judgment of emotions from facial expressions, The results of these studies, through contradictory in many cases, have been a valuable addition to the study of emotions in man. The problem has been studied and restudied from many viewpoints and with reference to many psychological variables. However, there is one area that is virtually untouched by the researcher in this field, i.e. the area of abnormal psychology. This is surprising insofar as affective disturbances are often a prime differentiating factor in the study and diagnosis of abnormal individuals. In the diagnosis of schizophrenic and manic depressive psychosis, affect is the basic consideration. Taber defines an affective psychosis: "an emotional one as manic depressive psychosis" and lists as a symptom of schizophrenia "loss of emotions or emotions manifest as out of place." Thomas Verner Moore did a factorial analysis of forty abnormal symptom which resulted in five factors or syndromes, three of which were emotional. “That left us with three emotional syndromes: one characteristic of catatonic dementia praecox, one of the manic type of manic-depressive insanity, and one of the anxious depressed type of manic-depressive insanity.” Another phenomenon that is closely allied to affect is that of empathy. As will be shown in Chapter II, there are reasons to suppose that projection influences the judgment of emotional expressions, and that the empathic ability of the subject is probably a necessary condition for the ability to judge emotions from a posed picture. E.E. Southard points out the need for research in this area when he states, “Accordingly, I would set up as a research problem in the empathic reaction the whole field of schizophrenia (dementia praecox) and cyclothymia (manic depressive and similar psychoses).” Thus with the intimate tie-up between affective experiences and what T.V. Moore terms "the essential psychoses" it would seem opportune to launch an exploratory study into the possibility that empathy or projection is employed by abnormal subjects in the judgment of emotional expressions. Statement of The Problem There are many questions concerning the relationship between emotional flatness of the schizophrenic and his perception or judgment of stimuli from the environment. One such question is whether the patient will project his apparent reduced effect into his judgments of the emotional expressions of others. If the patient is projecting, then we can expect his judgment to reflect his own flatness and, therefore, show a decided tendency to make judgments of less intense emotions and states of feelings. This thesis will be an investigation of the problem concerning the judgment of facial expressions of emotions by schizophrenic patients whose affect is reduced. The specific hypothesis to be tested is: “Schizophrenic patents with reduced affect when asked to make judgments concerning facial expressions of emotion will tend to choose the less intense emotional states as the apt descriptions of the expressions they are judging.”