Predicting Social Motivation and Interactions in Schizophrenia: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

AIM Researchers have studied mechanisms underlying social motivation in schizophrenia, including reward learning, hostile attribution bias, and defeatist performance beliefs. Yet, existing work is limited by the use of laboratory paradigms and/or trait-level measures. METHODS This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to determine factors that influence daily social motivation. Eighty-two Veterans with psychosis completed four electronic surveys per day for one week. Social activity, including appraisals of interactions, experienced enjoyment, and desire for future socialization, was collected. RESULTS Increases in social rewards and performance appraisals predicted desire for social interactions, but did not predict the number of subsequent interactions. Hostile attributions were not associated with desire nor subsequent interactions. CONCLUSIONS Results support the value of EMA to measure state-level changes in motivation and suggest positive experiences and performance appraisals are important, malleable determinants of social motivation. Yet, these factors may not entirely determine future social behavior. Other influences should be considered.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

• Publication date

  2026-02-27

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001872PMID 41747257
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Understanding social situations: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial evaluating a novel social cognitive training versus modified problem-solving training for people with psychosis

  2024cited by this paper
• Social anhedonia in the daily lives of people with schizophrenia: Examination of anticipated and consummatory pleasure.

  2024cited by this paper
• Evidence-based psychosocial interventions in schizophrenia: a critical review

  2024cited by this paper
• Social Motivation in Schizophrenia: What's Effort Got to Do With It?

  2023cited by this paper
• Social Psychopharmacology: Novel Approaches to Treat Deficits in Social Motivation in Schizophrenia.

  2023cited by this paper
• Understanding the Consequences of Moment-by-Moment Fluctuations in Mood and Social Experience for Paranoid Ideation in Psychotic Disorders

  2022cited by this paper
• Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

  2022cited by this paper
• Neural, behavioural and real-life correlates of social context sensitivity and social reward learning during interpersonal interactions in the schizophrenia spectrum

  2021cited by this paper
• An ecological examination of loneliness and social functioning in people with schizophrenia.

  2021cited by this paper
• Preliminary outcomes of the Motivation and Skills Support (MASS) mobile app: An Ecological Momentary Intervention for social functioning in schizophrenia (Preprint)

  2021cited by this paper
• Smartphone sensing of social interactions in people with and without schizophrenia.

  2020cited by this paper
• Hostile attribution bias in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders: narrative review of the literature and persisting questions

  2020cited by this paper
• Ecological momentary assessment of everyday social experiences of people with schizophrenia: A systematic review.

  2019cited by this paper
• Social motivation in schizophrenia: How research on basic reward processes informs and limits our understanding.

  2018cited by this paper
• Social Motivation in Schizophrenia: The Impact of Oxytocin on Vigor in the Context of Social and Nonsocial Reinforcement

  2018cited by this paper
• Emotion Regulation Predicts Everyday Emotion Experience and Social Function in Schizophrenia

  2018cited by this paper
• Understanding the Association Between Negative Symptoms and Performance on Effort-Based Decision-Making Tasks: The Importance of Defeatist Performance Beliefs

  2018cited by this paper
• Explicit and Implicit Reinforcement Learning Across the Psychosis Spectrum

  2017cited by this paper
• Deficits in reinforcement learning but no link to apathy in patients with schizophrenia

  2017cited by this paper
• Probabilistic Reinforcement Learning in Patients With Schizophrenia: Relationships to Anhedonia and Avolition.

  2016cited by this paper
• Using social outcomes to inform decision-making in schizophrenia: Relationships with symptoms and functioning.

  2016cited by this paper
• Social behavior, interaction appraisals, and suicidal ideation in schizophrenia: The dangers of being alone.

  2016cited by this paper
• Social cognition, social competence, negative symptoms and social outcomes: Inter-relationships in people with schizophrenia.

  2015cited by this paper
• Reinforcement learning deficits in people with schizophrenia persist after extended trials.

  2014cited by this paper
• The motivation and pleasure dimension of negative symptoms: neural substrates and behavioral outputs.

  2014cited by this paper
• A review of reward processing and motivational impairment in schizophrenia.

  2014cited by this paper
• Emotion deficits in people with schizophrenia.

  2013cited by this paper
• Ecological Momentary Assessment of social functioning in schizophrenia: impact of performance appraisals and affect on social interactions.

  2013cited by this paper
• Are patients with schizophrenia rational maximizers? Evidence from an ultimatum game study.

  2011cited by this paper
• Defeatist beliefs as a mediator of cognitive impairment, negative symptoms, and functioning in schizophrenia.

  2009cited by this paper
• A meta-analysis of controlled research on social skills training for schizophrenia.

  2008cited by this paper
• Selective reinforcement learning deficits in schizophrenia support predictions from computational models of striatal-cortical dysfunction.

  2007cited by this paper
• Feasibility and Validity of Computerized Ecological Momentary Assessment in Schizophrenia

  2007cited by this paper
• Preferences for schizophrenia treatment outcomes among public policy makers, consumers, families, and providers.

  2003cited by this paper
• Social skills performance assessment among older patients with schizophrenia.

  2001cited by this paper
• The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

  1995cited by this paper
• Five-component model of schizophrenia: assessing the factorial invariance of the positive and negative syndrome scale.

  1994cited by this paper
• The positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) for schizophrenia.

  1987cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.