The relative accuracy of U.S. British, and Mexican raters in judging the emotional displays of schizophrenic and normal U.S. women.

Asked U.S., British, and Mexican male students of college age to discriminate among three affective displays presented by 10 schizophrenic and 10 normal U.S. women. Significant main effects for diagnostic category, nationality of judge and for the interaction of nationality and diagnostic category were obtained. Furthermore, U.S. judges did significantly better in judging normals as compared to schizophrenics, British judges tended in the same direction, and Mexican judges did not. Co-nationality and national similarity confer an advantage in judging normals as compared to schizophrenics. The data have relevance for questions about the effects of sending and receiving nonverbal emotional messages on communications or miscommunications between doctor and patient, doctors from different cultures and people including conference negotiators, from different national backgrounds.