Citation

Zhang K, Szanto K, Clark L, Dombrovski AY. Behav. Res. Ther. 2018; ePub(ePub): 103329.

Affiliation

Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Electronic address: dombrovskia@gmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.brat.2018.10.019

PMID

30477905

Abstract

Impaired decision-making has recently gained recognition as a component of the suicidal diathesis. Yet, although precipitants and particularly deterrents to suicidal behavior are often interpersonal, little is known about social decision-making in suicidal individuals. This study employed a novel version of the Ultimatum Game to investigate how empathy moderates responses to social conflict in 149 older adults, comprising groups of suicide attempters (n = 49), suicide ideators (n = 32), non-suicidal depressed controls (n = 33), and a non-psychiatric control group (n = 35). Participants acted as responder to a series of single-shot financial offers that varied in fairness. Some offers were paired with social context information on the proposer, designed to evoke either empathy or punishment. Offer acceptance was sensitive to Fairness and Social Context, such that participants accepted more offers in the empathy condition and fewer offers in the punishment condition. A Group * Context interaction was observed, wherein the suicide attempters adjusted their acceptance rates less in the empathy condition than the non-psychiatric controls. Thus, older adults with a history of suicide attempt were less influenced by empathy scenarios, indicating that a failure to integrate others' emotions into decisions may undermine social deterrents to suicide.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Depression; Empathy; Mood disorder; Suicidal ideation; Suicide; Ultimatum game