Social cognition
How does high schizotypy affect empathy and social thinking?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
People with high schizotypy struggle to understand others' emotions and tend to undermentalize, a deficit partially driven by lower cognitive flexibility and inhibition.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Social cognitive and mentalizing difficulties manifest differently across psychiatric profiles, with schizophrenia and high schizotypy generally leading to undermentalizing or severe overall deficits, whereas borderline personality disorder and social anxiety lead to 'hypermentalizing' patterns.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — High vs low schizotypy extreme groups on computerized mentalizing tasks
- N
- N=86 · 157 reached; 86 tested (39 high, 47 low schizotypy); 72% women; mean age 23.6
- Population
- Healthy volunteers selected for high or low schizotypy
- Outcome
- Mentalizing-task performance and its cognitive correlates in high vs low schizotypy
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
How does high schizotypy affect empathy and social thinking?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
86 participants
After the selection process described in Figure , 86 participants (72% female) were tested.
39 in the high-schizotypy group
After the selection process described in Figure , 86 of these participants were tested – 47 in the low-schizotypy group and 39 in the high-schizotypy group, using computerized paradigms measuring ToM and agency and the cognitive tests measuring inhibition and flexibility.
Key findings
The high-schizotypy group performed significantly worse on emotional understanding (affective Theory of Mind) and committed more undermentalizing errors compared to the low-schizotypy group. While the groups did not differ on overall executive function tests, statistical analysis showed that individual levels of cognitive flexibility and inhibition significantly influenced these social gaps. Additionally, high-schizotypy participants showed self-agency deficits only when their cursor movement was manipulated by a 60 o deviation.
Methodology
The researchers screened healthy volunteers and selected 86 participants, placing 39 in a high-schizotypy group and 47 in a low-schizotypy group. They assessed participants' social understanding using a 15-min-long movie featuring 45 questions about characters' thoughts and feelings. They also measured cognitive inhibition with the Stroop Test, cognitive flexibility with the Trail-Making Test, and self-agency with a computerized cursor task.
Limitations
Because this study used a cross-sectional, extreme-groups design, it cannot prove that schizotypy or cognitive deficits causally produce social cognition difficulties over time. The sample was highly skewed toward female participants, representing 72% of the tested group, which contrasts with clinical schizophrenia populations where males are typically slightly overrepresented. The research did not assess a distinct disorganized schizotypy dimension due to the limitations of the German version of the questionnaire, meaning potential relationships with disorganized traits remain unexamined. Additionally, the social assessment had participants passively view interactions, so the results may not reflect how people with high schizotypy interact when they are active participants in real-life social situations.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.