Abstract

Behavioral economic games, particularly social exchange games, are experimental paradigms that are theorized to be well-suited to the quantitative study of social affiliation and social impairment. How people with psychiatric illness resulting in social impairment might make decisions differently from those with fewer social difficulties is of interest; however, whether prediction of others’ behavior reflects interpersonal impairment among people with a diagnosable psychiatric illness has received relatively little attention in the literature. Using a sample of participants with and without mood-and-anxiety-related psychopathology, I investigated how correlates of interpersonal dysfunction, specifically vindictiveness and negative affect, relate to the predictions made about partner behavior in the context of a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma task. I hypothesized that vindictiveness, negative affect, and their interaction would moderate the relation between participants’ stated predictions of their partners’ generosity and their own generosity in the task in a multilevel model. Contrary to hypotheses, neither correlate emerged as a significant moderator, and follow-up analyses revealed that those with higher vindictiveness and negative affect ratings made predictions similarly to those with lower ratings, and those with psychiatric diagnoses made predictions that were similar to those without a diagnosis. Implications for future study designs investigating how mood and anxiety-related psychopathology and their correlates might affect prediction in a prisoner’s dilemma task are discussed.

Committee Chair

Thomas Rodebaugh

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Psychology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

9-11-2020

Language

English (en)

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Psychology Commons

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