Perception and experience of musical emotions in schizophrenia

Barbora Kerkova

doi:10.1177/0305735618792427

Perception and experience of musical emotions in schizophrenia

Psychology of Music ◽

10.1177/0305735618792427 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 199-214

Author(s):

Barbora Kerkova

Keyword(s):

Laboratory Research ◽

Affective Processing ◽

Affective Deficits ◽

Arousal And Valence

The schizophrenic disturbance of affective processing has seen a welcome revival in academic inquiry. However, laboratory research on emotion in schizophrenia has largely drawn on facial and prosodic stimuli and the suitability of this practice has been questioned. This article aims to explore the utility of musical material, and to motivate its use in research on emotion in schizophrenia. The article lists some of the empirical advantages of musical material and describes key auditory and affective deficits which could alter musical emotions in schizophrenia. Existing findings pertaining to the perception and experience of musical arousal and valence in schizophrenia are reviewed and compared with nonmusical findings. Results suggest that schizophrenia affects the recognition of both musical and nonmusical emotions. However, musical and nonmusical emotions appear to differ in that: 1) musical emotions are more arousing, 2) negative musical emotions stimulate approach tendencies, and 3) both the perception and experience of musical emotions share these characteristics. These differences are presently unexplained and warrant further investigation. An improvement in the use of musical material in research on emotion in schizophrenia is justified.

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The Role of Distress Disclosure Tendencies in the Experience and Expression of Laboratory-Induced Sadness

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000222 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 55-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jeffrey H. Kahn ◽

Daniel W. Cox ◽

A. Myfanwy Bakker ◽

Julia I. O’Loughlin ◽

Agnieszka M. Kotlarczyk

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Negative Emotion ◽

Theoretical Models ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Emotion Words ◽

Distress Disclosure ◽

Computerized Text Analysis

Abstract. The benefits of talking with others about unpleasant emotions have been thoroughly investigated, but individual differences in distress disclosure tendencies have not been adequately integrated within theoretical models of emotion. The purpose of this laboratory research was to determine whether distress disclosure tendencies stem from differences in emotional reactivity or differences in emotion regulation. After completing measures of distress disclosure tendencies, social desirability, and positive and negative affect, 84 participants (74% women) were video recorded while viewing a sadness-inducing film clip. Participants completed post-film measures of affect and were then interviewed about their reactions to the film; these interviews were audio recorded for later coding and computerized text analysis. Distress disclosure tendencies were not predictive of the subjective experience of emotion, but they were positively related to facial expressions of sadness and happiness. Distress disclosure tendencies also predicted judges’ ratings of the verbal disclosure of emotion during the interview, but self-reported disclosure and use of positive and negative emotion words were not associated with distress disclosure tendencies. The authors present implications of this research for integrating individual differences in distress disclosure with models of emotion.

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Why People With High Alexithymia Make More Utilitarian Judgments

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000474 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 23-30

Author(s):

Xiangyi Zhang ◽

Zhihui Wu ◽

Shenglan Li ◽

Ji Lai ◽

Meng Han ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Empathic Concern ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Affective Processing ◽

Process Dissociation ◽

The Difference

Abstract. Although recent studies have investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments, such an effect remains elusive. Furthermore, moral judgments have been conflated with the moral inclinations underlying those judgments in previous studies. Using a process dissociation approach to independently quantify the strength of utilitarian and deontological inclinations, the present study investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments. We found that deontological inclinations were significantly lower in the high alexithymia group than in the low alexithymia group, whereas the difference in the utilitarian inclinations between the two groups was nonsignificant. Furthermore, empathic concern and deontological inclinations mediated the association between alexithymia and conventional relative judgments (i.e., more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments), showing that people with high alexithymia have low empathic concern, which, in turn, decreases deontological inclinations and contributes to conventional relative judgments. These findings underscore the importance of empathy and deontological inclinations in moral judgments and indicate that individuals with high alexithymia make more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments possibly due to a deficit in affective processing.

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Behavioral Testing of Mice Concerning Anxiety and Depression

Zeitschrift für Psychologie ◽

10.1027/2151-2604/a000215 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 223 (3) ◽

pp. 151-156 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nina Schweinfurth ◽

Undine E. Lang

Keyword(s):

Environmental Influences ◽

Sickness Behavior ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Anxiety And Depression ◽

Housing Conditions ◽

Human Beings ◽

Behavioral Testing ◽

New Developments ◽

Animal Trials ◽

Resilience Factors

Abstract. In the development of new psychiatric drugs and the exploration of their efficacy, behavioral testing in mice has always shown to be an inevitable procedure. By studying the behavior of mice, diverse pathophysiological processes leading to depression, anxiety, and sickness behavior have been revealed. Moreover, laboratory research in animals increased at least the knowledge about the involvement of a multitude of genes in anxiety and depression. However, multiple new possibilities to study human behavior have been developed recently and improved and enable a direct acquisition of human epigenetic, imaging, and neurotransmission data on psychiatric pathologies. In human beings, the high influence of environmental and resilience factors gained scientific importance during the last years as the search for key genes in the development of affective and anxiety disorders has not been successful. However, environmental influences in human beings themselves might be better understood and controllable than in mice, where environmental influences might be as complex and subtle. The increasing possibilities in clinical research and the knowledge about the complexity of environmental influences and interferences in animal trials, which had been underestimated yet, question more and more to what extent findings from laboratory animal research translate to human conditions. However, new developments in behavioral testing of mice involve the animals’ welfare and show that housing conditions of laboratory mice can be markedly improved without affecting the standardization of results.

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