Effective interpersonal interaction is contingent on a person’s ability to correctly interpret information. Furthermore, this interpretation also relies on an individual’s ability to synthesize many verbal and non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions, among others. Generally, a person who has these skills has active social cognition. Hence, social cognition refers to the inherent ability to recognize, perceive, and effectively infer socially appropriate data. Social cognition plays a pivotal role in interpersonal functioning. Scholars who have studied social cognition performance argue that this skill is generally impaired in people suffering from various psychiatric conditions. Nonetheless, the relationship between social cognition and severe depressive disorders is yet to be confirmed ( Weightman, Air, & Baune, 2014) . Depression results in pervasive impairments in interpersonal functioning. Nevertheless, schizophrenic and autistic patients experience severe social cognition impairments when compared to those who suffer from depression. This paper examines the performance of social cognition in depressed individuals.
Major Depressive Disorder
MDD is a severe mental disease that dramatically decreases a person’s quality of life. MDD is manifested through some symptoms such as anhedonia, depressed mood, weight changes, sleep deficiency, fatigue, feelings of guilt, as well as the inability to think and concentrate on a single thing ( Talarowska et al. 2016). The symptoms are used as the diagnostic criteria of MDD. Over the years, another key sign which is social functioning impairment has been associated with MDD. Notably, depressed patients are unable to sustain healthy relationships due to social cognition impairments. Therefore, it is common for these patients to experience relationship challenges with their spouses, friends, and other family members and acquaintances.
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Social Cognition
According to Ladegaard, Larsen, Videbech, & Lysaker (2014), social cognition refers to mental and emotional aptitudes which enable individuals to comprehend themselves and other peoples’ intentions. Social cognition transpires outside of cognizant awareness. It, therefore, spans cognizant and implied processes. Furthermore, social cognition is directly affected by a person’s cultural embeddedness.
Emotional Decoding
Generally, MDD patients display insufficiencies in the manner in which they perceive, react to, and store emotional impetuses. Studies focus mostly on facial expressions of essential sensations. In MDD patients, an overall emotion recognition deficit occurs in face perception together with a mood-congruent processing bias with overactivation towards depressed facial expressions, as well as in-activation where jovial facial expressions are concerned. Nonetheless, the deficiencies are not limited to the visual field since recognition deficits are also evident in affective prosody. The conducted studies p[provide sufficient evidence to prove the existence of emotional deciphering deficits in MDD.
Cognitive Theory of Mind (TOM)
Notably, depressed patients have ToM deficits. Majority of these patients are impaired on the fundamental cognitive theory of mind which is exhibited by their failure to successfully construe first and second order queries associated with social exchanges ( Talarowska et al. 2016). Additionally, these patients fail to detect social faux pas, which is critical in effective social interactions. Recent studies further suggest that MDD patients display less emotional consciousness of what other individuals are thinking about while they completely comprehend their emotional states.
Social Cognition and Major Depressive Disorder
Impaired social cognition is one of the signs of a variety of psychiatric ailments such as schizophrenia autism. Despite the broad studies that have been carried out on the effects of depression on social cognitive functioning, this relationship is not clearly understood ( Weightman, Air, & Baune, 2014) . Nonetheless, some of these studies provide evidence that shows that major depressive disorder has the same, albeit less severe effect on social cognition. Moreover, even though major depressive disorder is revealed by emotion-based symptoms such as anhedonia and changes in mood, depressed patients also manifest serious and persistent impairments in interpersonal functioning ( Weightman, Air, & Baune, 2014) . However, patients suffering from depression experience less severe impairments as opposed to autistic and schizophrenic patients.
Notably, individuals with major depressive divorce find it hard to understand and infer verbal cues. In most cases, there is a negative bias when these individuals attempt to interpret prosodic stimuli. Studies that have examined the correlation between social cognition and depression focus mainly on the emotional domain, especially facial expressions or the affective theory of the mind. According to Ladegaard, Larsen, Videbech, & Lysaker (2014), patients with major depressive disorder are unable to recognize responsive facial expressions. Nonetheless, these studies also found that depressed individuals are highly sensitive to sad expressions as opposed to happy ones. Randomized control trials carried out to examine the relationship between these two variables showed that people with severe depression are likely to understand neutral expressions negatively, as compared to those without depression. Nonetheless, the results lack consistency since the experimental group in some studies interpreted neutral stimulus as sad when compared to the control group.
In the case of happy expressions, the results from different control trials have even greater inconsistencies. While some studies indicated that depressed patients had a low probability of correctly detecting positive emotions, others have discovered a negative association between the recognition of jovial expressions and the existence of maladaptive schema. Indeed, patients with severe depressive disorder are more likely than others to find it challenging to recognize jovial expressions. In contrast, the same patients are determined to experience more severe recognition deficiencies when negative emotions are displayed ( Talarowska et al. 2016). Likewise, these patients require a more significant emotional intensity to recognize jovial expressions, while less intensity is needed for the identification of melancholic expressions.
Social cognition fosters effective interactions between people. The ability to comprehend and react appropriately to facial expressions as well as verbal and non-verbal cues is crucial for the development and sustainability of healthy relationships. People suffering from the major depressive disorder are often unable to interpret facial expressions and other non-verbal cues. Their social cognition abilities are impaired, which is the reason why they face immense relationship challenges. Generally, MDD patients construe emotional impetuses differently, as compared to healthy individuals. Mainly, these patients tussle with complicated or nuanced emotional expressions. Likewise, they also exhibit a mood-congruent prejudice for construing stimuli more negatively. Notably, the severity of social cognition impairments is contingent on the magnitudes of depression. Patients with major depressive disorders are more likely to show grander deficits in social cognition as opposed to patients who are mildly depressed. Studies have confirmed that some of these impairments can be treated moderately by various therapies such as psychotherapy and medications like anti-depressants. Nonetheless, further research is required to prove the effectiveness of these drugs and treatments. Similarly, this topic should be studied extensively since the results obtained from the previous studies are highly inconsistent, which deters researchers from making valid conclusions. Nevertheless, the information promotes an understanding of the relationship between social cognition and depression.
References
Ladegaard, N., Larsen, E. R., Videbech, P., & Lysaker, P. H. (2014). Higher-order social cognition in first-episode major depression. Psychiatry research , 216 (1), 37-43.
Talarowska, M., Bobinska, K., Galecka, E., Szemraj, J., & Galecki, P. (2016). Human neuropsin gene and social cognition in depression. Neuropsychiatry , 6 (6), 396-402.
Weightman, M. J., Air, T. M., & Baune, B. T. (2014). A review of the role of social cognition in major depressive disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry , 5 , 179.
