Emotional Response in Psychiatric and Control Participants

The purpose of this research is to understand how the emotions of people with different mental health concerns (e.g., people with schizophrenia, people with major depressive disorder) differ from individuals without mental health concerns. A large body of literature suggests that people with mental illnesses have emotional abnormalities compared to healthy individuals, but a number of these abnormalities are not well understood. For example, often people with schizophrenia report on questionnaires that they experience fewer pleasant emotions when talking with other people, but some evidence suggests these individuals report a similar amount of pleasant emotion when they are actually engaged in a pleasant activity. Thus, it is unclear the extent to which reports of emotional abnormalities extend to a more real-world setting. In the tasks in the current proposal, participants will engage in a series of tasks designed to assess their emotional functioning. These tasks involve viewing emotional stimuli on the computer, engaging in social interactions, and consuming small amounts of food. In all tasks, participants will make ratings of their experiences of pleasure (and displeasure). We will then compare the experiences of patient groups to those of healthy individuals to test how emotional ratings might differ across these tasks.