Original Articles

Shame in Response to Affective Expression and Its Relation to Social Anhedonia and Schizotypy Traits

Gerhart, James PhD^∗; Russ, Eric U. PhD^†; Alonzi, Sarah BS^‡; Hoerger, Michael PhD, MSCR^‡

Author Information

^∗Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan

^†Department of Psychiatry, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

^‡Department of Psychology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Send reprint requests to James Gerhart, PhD, Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University, 137 Sloan Hall, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859. E-mail: [email protected].

Approval statement: All procedures were approved by the university institutional review board.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 210(1):p 54-60, January 2022. | DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001412

Abstract

Schizotypy is marked by negative symptoms including blunted affect, social isolation, and social anhedonia. Contemporary personality theory suggests that maladaptive shame regulation may disrupt interpersonal function across personality disorders. We hypothesized that “affect shame”—a conditioned response of shame evoked by openly expressing emotions would co-occur with interpersonal deficits in schizotypy. As hypothesized, affect shame was associated with interpersonal deficits (r = 0.17, p < 0.001), physical anhedonia (r = 0.13, p = 0.001), and social anhedonia (r = 0.17, p = 0.001). The observed findings were upheld in analyses controlling for demographic characteristics, depression symptom severity, and neuroticism and were maintained consistently across sensitivity analyses. Findings suggest that shame related to emotional expression is related to interpersonal deficits in schizotypy and have implications for our understanding of the etiology and treatment of this disorder.