Stinson Jessica, Wolfe Rebecca, Spaulding Will
Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308, USA.
South Texas Veterans Healthcare System, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2022 Jul 26;12(8):253. doi: 10.3390/bs12080253.
Social connectedness is increasingly understood to be a resilience factor that moderates vulnerability to poor physical and mental health. This study examines cognitive and affective processes that support normal socialization and social connectedness, and the impact of schizotypy, in well-functioning college students. In this study, a total of 824 college students completed a series of self-report questionnaires, and structural equation modeling was then employed to identify relationships between cognitive and affective empathy, alexithymia, distress tolerance, social connectedness, and schizotypy. Schizotypy is a trait-like condition, presumed to be genetic in origin, associated with the risk for schizophrenia. Like schizophrenia, schizotypy is thought to have three distinct dimensions or categories, termed positive, negative, and disorganized. Results indicate that the respective dimensions of schizotypy have different pathways to social connectedness, through both direct and indirect effects. Positive schizotypy exerts a counterintuitive positive influence on social connectedness, mediated by positive effects on cognitive empathy, but this is obscured by the high correlations between the schizotypal dimensions and the strong negative influences on empathy and social connectedness of the negative and disorganized dimensions, unless all those intercorrelations are taken into account. Overall, the pathways identified by structural equation modeling strongly support the role of empathy in mediating the impact of schizotypy on social connectedness. Implications for the etiology of social impairments in schizotypy, and for interventions to enhance social connectedness to improve quality of life and reduce health disparities in people at risk for severe mental illness, are discussed.
社会联结越来越被认为是一种恢复力因素，可调节身心健康不佳的易感性。本研究考察了支持正常社交和社会联结的认知与情感过程，以及分裂型人格特质在功能良好的大学生中的影响。在本研究中，共有824名大学生完成了一系列自我报告问卷，然后采用结构方程模型来确定认知共情、情感共情、述情障碍、痛苦耐受性、社会联结和分裂型人格特质之间的关系。分裂型人格特质是一种类似特质的状况，被认为起源于遗传，与精神分裂症风险相关。与精神分裂症一样，分裂型人格特质被认为有三个不同的维度或类别，即阳性、阴性和紊乱型。结果表明，分裂型人格特质的各个维度通过直接和间接影响对社会联结有不同的路径。阳性分裂型人格特质对社会联结产生了一种违反直觉的积极影响，通过对认知共情的积极影响介导，但这被分裂型维度之间的高相关性以及阴性和紊乱型维度对共情和社会联结的强烈负面影响所掩盖，除非考虑所有这些相互关联。总体而言，结构方程模型确定的路径有力地支持了共情在介导分裂型人格特质对社会联结影响方面的作用。本文讨论了分裂型人格特质中社会障碍的病因学意义，以及为增强社会联结以改善生活质量和减少重度精神疾病风险人群的健康差距而采取的干预措施。
