Affective and social-behavioral correlates of physical and social anhedonia in schizophrenia

Abstract

The association between scales measuring physical and social anhedonia, self-reports of affective response to emotion-eliciting films, and role play measures of social skill was evaluated in patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar affective disorder. We hypothesized that patients with schizophrenia would report significantly greater anhedonia than the bipolar patients and that higher scores on the anhedonia scales would be related to attenuated reports of the experience of positive affect and poorer social skill. Patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder did not differ in ratings of anhedonia, but both groups had higher physical and social anhedonia scores than did bipolar patients. Higher scores on the physical anhedonia scale, but not the social anhedonia scale, were related to attenuated reports of positive affect following viewing of affect-eliciting films in schizophrenia-schizoaffective disorder patients. Neither anhedonia scale was related to role play measures of social skill performance for any patient group.