Studies of schizotypy

Today, we look at two articles related to schizotypy. First, Eddy (2024) published “Self-Other Distinction and Schizotypy: Affect sharing and alexithymia in the prediction of socially anxious and avoidant traits” in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Here’s the edited abstract:

Social cognition may play a central role in many schizotypal personality characteristics, such as suspiciousness, constricted affect, social anxiety, and lack of close relationships. This study investigated how factors relevant to self-other distinction (i.e., emotion contagion and personal distress) were related to social schizotypal personality traits, in two experiments involving healthy young adults. Subclinical depressive symptoms, alexithymia, and obsessive-compulsive traits, were explored as potential mediators of the relationship between personal distress and schizotypy. Experiment 1 showed that high sadness contagion predicted personal distress, which in turn predicted cognitive disorganization. This relationship was mediated by low mood. Experiment 2 revealed that high personal distress predicted excessive social anxiety and ideas of reference, as well as obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Personal distress also predicted difficulty identifying feelings, an aspect of alexithymia that could develop as a result of difficulties in disentangling emotional experiences related to the self and others. However, it was difficulty describing feelings that predicted social anhedonia, constricted affect, and no close friends. While personal distress was a positive predictor of empathic concern, social anhedonia was a negative predictor. These findings suggest that personal distress and difficulty identifying feelings predict more anxious and disorganized aspects of schizotypy, as well as subclinical depressive and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Future research should investigate whether this profile, which may be more closely related to low self-other distinction, contrasts with a more socially avoidant presentation, characterized by negative schizotypal traits such as social anhedonia and lower empathy. 

I found it interesting that high personal distress and difficulty identifying feelings predict anxious, disorganized, depressive, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The next study looks at suicide risk. Wastler & Lenzenweger (2023) published “An Examination of the Relationship between Positive Schizotypy and Suicide Risk Using Five Distinct Samples” in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. The edited abstract follows:

Individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk for suicide. However, much less is known about suicide risk among individuals with schizotypic features. To address this gap in the literature, the current report examines the relationship between positive schizotypy and suicide risk using five distinct samples. Each of these five studies addresses unique, but complementary, questions regarding the relationship between positive schizotypy and suicide risk. Studies 1 and 2 investigate the cross-sectional relationship between perceptual aberrations and suicidal ideation. Study 3 examines the relationship between suicidal ideation and multiple positive schizotypic features (perceptual aberrations, magical thinking, paranoia, and referential thinking). Study 4 investigates the long-term relationship between perceptual aberrations and suicide risk through a 17-year follow-up. Finally, Study 5 examines the specificity of our findings using a psychiatric control group. Results across all five studies support a relationship between suicide risk and positive schizotypy. Specifically, perceptual aberrations were associated with suicide risk both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Results also suggest that individuals with positive schizotypic features have rates of suicidal ideation that are comparable to those with high negative affect and are significantly greater than healthy controls. Taken together, these findings establish an empirical connection between positive schizotypy and suicide risk, thus expanding the purview of the suicide risk construct. 

I thought that this was interesting in that the positive schizotypic features (perceptual aberrations, magical thinking, paranoia, and referential thinking) predict suicidal ideation. It makes sense to me that people with high levels of schizotypy face challenges in social cognition, especially those with high levels of personal distress and difficulty identifying feelings. Taken together, these articles suggest the importance of better understanding the features of schizotypy that make their lives difficult.