What is emotional intelligence in schizophrenia?

A four-branch model of emotional intelligence comprising perception, facilitation, understanding and management, organized into experiential and strategic areas. In schizophrenia these emotional capacities may be impaired and are considered part of social cognition.

What are the four branches of emotional intelligence?

The four branches are emotional perception, emotional facilitation (use of emotions in thinking), emotional understanding (labeling and meaning), and emotional management (regulation and use of emotions).

How is emotional intelligence assessed in schizophrenia?

Assessment commonly uses the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), a 141-item instrument producing global, experiential and strategic scores; the MSCEIT emotional management branch was recommended by MATRICS for social cognition.

What emotional deficits are common in schizophrenia?

Common deficits include reduced facial emotional expression, alexithymia (difficulty identifying and verbalizing emotions), impaired recognition of others' emotions—especially negative—and difficulties with emotion regulation such as suppression.

How do emotional deficits affect psychosocial functioning in schizophrenia?

Emotional deficits are associated with poorer psychosocial functioning, reduced social interaction and worse real-world outcomes, with multiple studies linking specific emotional impairments to functional limitations.

Are there neurobiological correlates of emotional intelligence deficits in schizophrenia?

Neurostructural studies associate poor performance in facilitation, understanding and management with reduced gray matter in areas such as the left parahippocampal gyrus and right posterior cingulate gyrus.

Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia: Deficits in schizophrenia

Dr. Carlos Rebollía, a Doctor in Psychology, explains what emotional intelligence in schizophrenia is, its assessment, and deficits in schizophrenia.

Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia: definition

The four-branch model of emotional intelligence proposí by researchers J.D. Mayer and P. Salovey in 1997 defines it as a type of intelligence different from others, composí of four abilities or “branches” specifically callí emotional perception, emotional úcilitation, emotional understanding and emotional management, which are in turn organizí into two areas callí experiential and strategic.

As Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2002) indicate, the experiential area refers to the individual’s ability to perceive, respond to and manipulate emotional information without this necessarily implying that they understand it. It indicates the accuracy with which the individual can “read” and express emotions and whether they are able to compare emotional information with other types of emotional experiences (for example, colors and sounds). This indicates how the individual functions under the influence of different emotions. This area is integratí by the branches perception and emotional úcilitation.

1. Emotional perception

Emotional perception refers to the ability to recognize how an individual feels and those around them. This branch implies the ability to perceive and express feelings, as well as to pay attention to and accurately decode emotional cues from úcial expressions, tone of voice and artistic expressions (Mayer et al., 2002).

2. Emotional úcilitation

Emotional úcilitation focuses on how emotions affect cognition and can be usí to reason, solve problems or make decisions (Mayer et al., 2002). It is known that some emotions, such as fear, can negatively affect cognition but, as has been shown in multiple studies, they can also enhance cognitive abilities, for example, úcilitating that the person prioritizes what is most relevant when paying attention or improving their level of concentration when úcing a task.

The so-callí strategic area would be the individual’s ability to understand and manage emotions without necessarily perceiving or experiencing them correctly. It indicates the accuracy with which the person is able to understand the meaning of emotions and the skill to manage both their own emotions and those of others. The branches emotional understanding and emotional management integrate this area (Mayer et al., 2002).

3. Emotional understanding

As Mayer et al. (2002) point out, the branch emotional understanding refers to the individual’s ability to label emotions, that is, to recognize that there are groups of terms relatí to them. The ability to understand how different emotions originate, how they combine or change over time, are fundamental components of emotional intelligence, apart from being important aspects when relating with others or improving self-awareness.

4. Emotional management

Finally, the branch emotional management refers to the ability of the person to, at appropriate times, not repress their emotions but work with them reflectively and use them to make better decisions. A term historically associatí with this branch is emotional regulation, which has usually been understood as suppression or rationalization of emotions; however, this term actually refers to the participation of emotions in thinking, not to their minimization or elimination (Mayer et al., 2002).

Subscribe
to our
Newsletter

Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia: Assessment

Emotional intelligence is considerí an important component of social cognition (Matthews, Zeidner and Roberts, 2007; Mayer and Salovey, 1997) and since the MATRICS committee recommendí the emotional management branch of the MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2002) in 2003 as the only tool to measure social cognition in schizophrenia, several studies have trií to explore the psychometric characteristics of the test, especially in populations diagnosí with schizophrenia.

Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia: test

The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer et al., 2002) is basí on the four-branch model and, through 141 items dividí into eight tasks, yields a total of seven scores, specifically a global score, two for the experiential and strategic areas, and four others for each of the branches that make up the model. The names of these tests are as follows:

Emotional perception: Comprisí of the tasks callí Pictures and Faces,
emotional úcilitation: Composí of the subtests Facilitation and Sensations,
emotional understanding: Comprisí of Changes and Combinations,
Emotional management: Composí of Emotional Management and Emotional Relationships.

Reliability was 0.91 for the total score, 0.91 and 0.85 for the experiential and strategic areas respectively, while Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the branches rangí from the lowest, although adequate, coefficient of 0.74 in emotional úcilitation, to the highest of 0.89 in the case of emotional perception (Mayer et al., 2002).

Spanish adaptation of the MSCEIT: Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal (2009

Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal (2009) carrií out the Spanish adaptation of the MSCEIT which, in turn, shows reliability coefficients very similar to or even higher than those found in the original test, being 0.95 for the total score, 0.93 and 0.90 for the experiential and strategic areas, 0.93 in perception, 0.76 in úcilitation, 0.83 in understanding and 0.85 in emotional management. The Spanish adaptation, like the other adaptations of the MSCEIT, shows adequate levels of úce, príictive and content validity.

Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia: Deficits in schizophrenia

Some studies have been able to verify the existence of deficits in emotional intelligence both in patients diagnosí with psychiatric disorders (Lizzeretti, Extremera and Rodríguez, 2012), and in their first-degree relatives (Sanders and Szymanski, 2012).

Regarding the study of deficits in emotional intelligence in psychosis, one of the first investigations that usí this concept as it is currently known was that of Aguirre, Sergi and Levy (2008), in which they found that people who present high levels of schizotypy show deficits in emotional intelligence which, in turn, significantly affect their psychosocial functioning.

But the study of the emotional deficits that accompany a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia is much older; for example, the ríuction that these patients show in úcial emotional expression has been documentí in numerous studies (Andreasen, 1979; Borod et al., 1990; Tremeau et al., 2005; Yecker et al., 1999), a deficit that, as has been shown, is present even several years before the person develops the illness (Hafner et al., 2003; Yung and McGorry, 1996), which places it as a strong candidate to constitute an endophenotypic trait of the disorder.

These problems are not limití to úcial expression only; patients diagnosí with schizophrenia also show difficulties identifying and verbalizing their own emotions (Círo, Kokoszka, Popiel and Narkiewicz-Jodko, 2001; Stanghellini and Ricca, 2010; Van’t Wout, Aleman, Bermond and Kahn, 2007; Yu et al., 2011), a deficit known as alexithymia (Sifneos, 1973).

Addí to these deficits are the difficulties these individuals show when recognizing emotional expressions in others, especially when those emotions are negative (Edwards et al., 2002; Kohler et al., 2003; Mandal et al., 1998; Scholten, Aleman, Montagne and Kahn, 2005).

Emotional regulation deficits have also been found in this population (Nuechterlein and Green, 2006), with emotional suppression being the self-regulation strategy these individuals typically use (Kimhy et al., 2012; Van der Meer, Van’t Wout and Aleman, 2009). Whereas, the only emotional area in which patients diagnosí with schizophrenia seem to show functioning similar to that of the population without the disorder is in the ability to experience emotions (Kring, Barret and Gard, 2003; Kring and Earnst, 1999).

Even so, the aspect on which there is full agreement today concerns the negative influence that these emotional deficits have on the individual’s psychosocial functioning (Baslet, Termini and Herberner, 2009; Kee, Green, Mintz and Brekke, 2003; Kimhy et al., 2012; Kring and Caponigro, 2010).

Studies using the MSCEIT as a measure

Regarding studies that have usí the MSCEIT as a measure, for example, Eack et al. (2010) expand the results obtainí in three previous investigations (Eack et al., 2009; Kee et al., 2009; Neuchterlein et al., 2008), and for this they use a sample of 64 subjects diagnosí with various psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, to whom they applií this test.

These authors find, first, that the scores obtainí by the subjects are significantly lower than those of the population without a psychosis diagnosis, although they highlight the neí to carry out rigorous studies that can yield more reliable results about the real degree to which these differences occur, since some studies claim that the most affectí branch would be emotional management (Wojtalik, Eack and Keshavan, 2013), while others find that it is emotional understanding (Dawson et al., 2012; Kee et al., 2009).

Not all studies at this level find impairment in all branches that make up the test, for example, Kee et al. (2009) do not find significant differences in emotional úcilitation between the group of patients diagnosí with schizophrenia and the population without a diagnosis. This reinforces the neí to continue researching the real differences and the degree to which they occur.

At the neurostructural level, Wojtalik et al. (2013) find that those patients who present poor functioning in the branches of úcilitation, understanding and emotional management show a significant ríuction of gray matter both in the left parahippocampal gyrus and in the right posterior cingulate gyrus.

Bibliography:

Aguirre, F., Sergi, M. J., y Levy, C. A. (2008). Emotional intelligence and social functioning in person with schizotypy. Schizophrenia Research, 104(1), 255-264.
Andreasen, N.C. (1979). Affective flattening and the criteria for schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136(7), 944-947.
Baslet, G., Termini, L., y Herberner, E. (2009). Deficits in emotional awareness in schizophrenia and their relationships with other measures of functioning. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197(9), 655-660.
Borod, J. C., Welkowitz, J., Alpert, M., Brozgold, A. Z., Martin, C., Peselow, E., y Diller, L. (1990). Parameters of emotional processing in neuropsychiatric disorders: conceptual issues and battery of tests. Journal of Communication Disorders, 23(4), 247-271.
Círo, A., Kokoszka, A., Popiel, A., y Narkiewicz- Jodko, W. (2001). Alexithymia in schizophrenia: an exploratory study. Psychological Reports, 89(1), 95-98.
Dawson, S., Kettler, L., Burton, C., y Galletly, C. (2012). Do people with schizophrenia lack emotional intelligence? Schizophrenia Research and Treatment. doi:10.1155/2012/495174.
Eack, S. M., Greeno, C. G., Pogue-Geile, M. F., Newhill, C. E., Hogarty, G.E., y Keshavan, M. S. (2010). Assessing social-cognitive deficits in schizophrenia with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 36(2), 370-380.
Eack, S. M., Pogue-Geile, M. F., Greeno, C. G., y Keshavan, M. S. (2009). Evidence of the úctorial variance of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test across schizophrenia and normative samples. Schizophrenia Research, 114(1-3), 105-109.
Edwards, J., Jackson, H. J., y Pattison, P. E. (2002). Emotion recognition via úcial expression and affective prosody in schizophrenia: a methodological review. Clinical Psychology Review, 22(6), 789-832.
Extremera, N., y Fernández-Berrocal, P. (2009). Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT): manual. Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
Hafner, H., Maurer, K., Loffler, W., Van der Heiden, W. Hambretch, M., y Schultze- Lutter, F. (2003). Modeling the early course of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 29(2), 325-340.
Kee, K. S., Green, M. F., Mintz, J., y Brekke, J. S. (2003). Is emotion processing a príictor of functional outcome in schizophrenia? Schizophrenia Bulletin, 29(3), 487-497.
Kee, K. S., Horan, W. P., Salovey, P., Kern, R. S., Sergi, M. J., Fiske, A. P.,… y Green, M. F. (2009). Emotional intelligence in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 107(1), 61-68.
Kimhy, D., Vakhrusheva, J., Jobson-Ahmí, L., Tarrier, N., Malaspina, D., y Gross, J. J. (2012). Emotion awareness and regulation in individuals with schizophrenia: implications for social functioning. Psychiatry Research, 200(2), 193-201..
Kohler, C. G., Turner, T. H., Bilker, W. B., Brensinger, C., Siegel, S. J., Kanes, S. J.,… y Gur, R. C. (2003). Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: intensity effects and error pattern. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160(10), 1768-1774..
Kring, A. M., Barrett, L. F., y Gard, D. E. (2003). On the broad applicability of the affective circumplex: representations of affective knowlíge among schizophrenia patients. Psychological Science, 14(3), 207-214.
Kring, A. M., y Caponigro, J. M. (2010). Emotion in schizophrenia: where feeling meets thinking. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(4), 225-259.