School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.
School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Br J Clin Psychol. 2020 Jun;59(2):139-153. doi: 10.1111/bjc.12234. Epub 2019 Sep 6.
Schizophrenia is characterized by impaired social interactions and altered trust. In the general population, trust is often based on facial appearance, with limited validity but enormous social consequences. The aim was to examine trust processing in schizophrenia and specifically to examine how people with schizophrenia use facial appearance as well as actual partner fairness to guide trusting decisions.
An experimental economic game study.
Here, we tested how patients with schizophrenia and control participants (each N = 24) use facial trustworthiness appearance and partner fairness behaviour to guide decisions in a multi-round Trust Game. In the Trust Game, participants lent money to 'partners' whose facial appearance was either untrustworthy or trustworthy, and who either played fairly or unfairly. Clinical symptoms were measured as well as explicit trustworthiness impressions.
Overall, the patients with schizophrenia showed unimpaired explicit facial trustworthiness impressions and unimpaired facial appearance biases in the Trust Game. Crucially, patients and controls significantly differed so that the patients with schizophrenia did not learn to discriminate in the Trust Game based on actual partner fairness, unlike control participants.
A failure to discriminate trust has important implications for everyday functioning in schizophrenia, as forming accurate trustworthiness beliefs is an essential social skill. Critically, without relying on more valid trust cues, people with schizophrenia may be especially susceptible to the misleading effect of appearance when making trusting decisions.
Findings People with schizophrenia made very similar facial trustworthiness impressions to healthy controls and also used facial appearance to guide trust decisions similarly to controls. However, the patient group were less able to explicitly distinguish between fair and unfair partners based on their behaviour compared with the control group. Moreover, people with schizophrenia failed to use actual partner fairness to guide their financial decisions in the Trust Game, unlike controls, and this impairment was specific to a social task. People with schizophrenia may be particularly reliant on facial appearance when trusting others, as they may struggle to incorporate more valid trustworthiness information in their decision-making, such as actual partner fairness.
精神分裂症的特征是社交互动受损和信任改变。在普通人群中，信任通常基于面部外观，虽然有效性有限，但具有巨大的社会影响。目的是研究精神分裂症中的信任处理，特别是研究精神分裂症患者如何使用面部外观和实际伙伴公平来指导信任决策。
一项实验经济学游戏研究。
在这里，我们测试了精神分裂症患者和对照组参与者（每组 N=24）如何使用面部可信赖度外观和伙伴公平行为来指导多轮信任游戏中的决策。在信任游戏中，参与者将钱借给面部外观不可信或可信的“伙伴”，而这些伙伴的行为要么是公平的，要么是不公平的。还测量了临床症状和明确的可信赖度印象。
总体而言，精神分裂症患者表现出明确的面部可信赖度印象和在信任游戏中不受面部外观偏见的影响。至关重要的是，患者和对照组之间存在显著差异，精神分裂症患者不像对照组那样根据实际伙伴公平来区分信任游戏，而无法学习区分。
无法区分信任对精神分裂症患者的日常生活功能有重要影响，因为形成准确的可信赖度信念是一项重要的社交技能。至关重要的是，如果不依赖更有效的信任线索，精神分裂症患者在做出信任决策时可能特别容易受到外观的误导。
发现精神分裂症患者的面部可信赖度印象与健康对照组非常相似，并且也像对照组一样使用面部外观来指导信任决策。然而，与对照组相比，患者组根据行为明确区分公平和不公平伙伴的能力较差。此外，与对照组不同，精神分裂症患者无法使用实际伙伴公平来指导他们在信任游戏中的财务决策，而且这种损伤是特定于社交任务的。精神分裂症患者在信任他人时可能特别依赖于面部外观，因为他们可能难以在决策中纳入更有效的可信赖度信息，例如实际伙伴公平。
