Looking at the other side of the coin: A meta-analysis of self-reported emotional arousal in people with schizophrenia

Abnormalities in emotional experience have long been viewed as core features of schizophrenia. Numerous studies indicate that people with schizophrenia report less pleasure than controls when reporting non-current feelings using trait, hypothetical, prospective, and retrospective emotional self-report formats; however, current research has demonstrated that schizophrenia patients and controls do not differ in their subjective reactions to emotional stimuli in most laboratory studies. Although substantial attention has been paid to studies examining self-reported valence in schizophrenia, subjective reports of arousal in response to affective stimuli have been neglected. Understanding the role of arousal in schizophrenia is imperative given that valence and arousal are differentially associated with physiological and behavioral responses. To understand the role of self-reported arousal, a meta-analysis of 26 published studies employing laboratory emotion induction paradigms in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls was conducted. Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and PubMed electronic databases and reference lists from identified articles were used as data sources. Using a random effects model, analyses demonstrated that controls and people with schizophrenia reported similar levels of subjective arousal in response to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli; however, people with schizophrenia reported experiencing greater arousal than controls in response to neutral stimuli. Furthermore, moderator analyses suggested that gender and methodological factors, such as rating scale and stimulus type, may affect these patterns of results and play a key role in determining whether patients and controls differ in self-reported arousal.