You ≠ me: individual differences in the structure of social cognition

Abstract

This study investigated the structure of social cognition, and how it is influenced by personality; specifically, how various socio-cognitive capabilities, and the pattern of interrelationships and co-dependencies among them differ between divergent personality styles. To measure social cognition, a large non-clinical sample (n = 290) undertook an extensive battery of self-report and performance-based measures of visual perspective taking, imitative tendencies, affective empathy, interoceptive accuracy, emotion regulation, and state affectivity. These same individuals then completed the Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory. Latent Profile Analysis revealed two dissociable personality profiles that exhibited contrasting cognitive and affective dispositions, and multivariate analyses indicated further that these profiles differed on measures of social cognition; individuals characterised by a flexible and adaptive personality profile expressed higher action orientation (emotion regulation) compared to those showing more inflexible tendencies, along with better visual perspective taking, superior interoceptive accuracy, less imitative tendencies, and lower personal distress and negativity. These characteristics point towards more efficient self-other distinction, and to higher cognitive control more generally. Moreover, low-level cognitive mechanisms served to mediate other higher level socio-emotional capabilities. Together, these findings elucidate the cognitive and affective underpinnings of individual differences in social behaviour, providing a data-driven model that should guide future research in this area.

Dissociating Profiles of Social Cognitive Disturbances Between Mixed Personality and Anxiety Disorder

“…This task has been used elsewhere to investigate both the developmental trajectory (Dumontheil et al, 2010) and neurophysiological underpinnings of visual perspective taking (for a review see Bukowski, 2018). Further, this task achieved excellent split-half reliability in our previous study (Shaw et al, 2018). Some of the boxes have opaque backs, which means that the Director cannot see their contents from her position behind the shelf display -these are visible only from participant's vantage point.…”

“…From this dimensional perspective, similar but less severe profiles of sociocognitive disturbances should be observed in healthy individuals who exhibit the same pattern of inflexibility among certain personality styles as PD patients (e.g., emotional instability). Indeed, in a previous investigation conducted on a large healthy sample we revealed associations between individual differences in the flexible deployment of personality styles and various components of social cognition: Relative to individuals reporting a broader repertoire of personality styles, those showing a strong preference for avoidant, borderline, depressive, and dependent styles exhibited less control over imitative tendencies, maladaptive styles of emotion regulation, and greater distress when empathizing with others (Shaw et al, 2018). This suggests that personality mechanisms giving rise to maladaptive tendencies toward specific personality traits might drive the patterns of social cognitive dysfunction observed in PD.…”

“…A large battery of performance-based (implicit) and self-report (explicit) measures of social cognition was administered to all participants. This battery was developed in a previous study (Shaw et al, 2018) to assess state affectivity at the time of testing, imitative control, emotion recognition, empathic awareness and expression, low-level visual perspective taking, and emotion regulation. In the section below, each test comprising this battery is described briefly in the order they were administered.…”

“…Despite a lack of agreement concerning the structure of cognitive skills subsumed within this psychological construct, and considerable variability among existing taxonomies (Happé et al, 2017), several facets have been investigated in both healthy and clinical populations: (1) Emotion recognition -our ability to recognize emotional expressions in others; (2) imitative control -the capacity to inhibit our automatic tendency to imitate the actions of others; (3) visual perspective takingthe process through which we infer what others can see; (4) empathy -our ability to understand and share in the emotions of others (cognitive and affective empathy, respectively), whilst recognizing that they are the source of one's own emotional state (Cuff et al, 2014); and (5) emotion regulation -the capacity to self-regulate our emotional responses in order to behave appropriately in the face of changing environmental demands (Aldao, 2013). These distinct facets of social cognition are assumed to be organized in a hierarchical manner, whereby complex abilities build on more elementary mechanismsefficient emotion recognition and imitative control are suggested to be necessary for affective empathy, for example, and lowlevel perspective taking is considered a prerequisite for cognitive empathy (Decety, 2011;Happé et al, 2017;Shaw et al, 2018). Another fundamental cognitive mechanism believed to serve a crucial role in all of the aforementioned processes is one that allows us to distinguish and switch flexibly between self-and other-representations.…”

“…This allowed us to identify impairments to social cognition specific to MPD or common to both psychiatric groups. Given our previous finding that personality-related individual differences in social cognition span multiple levels (Shaw et al, 2018), we measured socio-cognitive abilities believed to reflect both fundamental mechanisms as well as higher-level processes; specifically, the test battery included measures of emotion recognition, imitative control and visual perspective taking, with tests of higher-level cognitive and affective empathy, and emotion regulation. Our choice of specific measures was driven by research in both healthy and clinical samples, such as patients with autism spectrum disorder (Sowden et al, 2016;Deschrijver et al, 2017), schizophrenia (Langdon et al, 2001), depression (Grunewald et al, 2015) and multiple sclerosis (Czekóová et al, 2019).…”