The Role of Conformity in Relation to Cohesiveness and Intimacy in Day-Hospital Groups of Patients with Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: Conformity is defined as the act of adjusting one's behavior to match the social responses of others. Patients with schizophrenia often adjust their maladaptive behaviors by conforming in group treatment settings. This study aimed to examine whether the opinions of group members influence conformity of patients with schizophrenia who attend day-hospital programs. METHODS: Nineteen patients with schizophrenia from four different day-hospital programs and 23 healthy controls from four different social clubs completed the homographic meaning choice task under conditions of prior exposure to the pseudo-opinions of their group members, strangers, and unknown information sources. Group influences on conformity were observed when the level of group cohesiveness was high and the level of intimacy was low across participant groups. RESULTS: Controls did not exhibit a significant effect of group influence on conformity, whereas patients were significantly influenced by their group members when making conformity-based decisions despite significantly lower intimacy and cohesiveness levels. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that unlike controls, patients with schizophrenia tend to respond with conformity when influenced by the opinions of their affiliated group. In patients with schizophrenia group conformity may be used to select a more accurate decision and to enhance feelings of affiliation among them.

Relationship between the Level of Insight and Memory Distortion about the First Admission in Patients with Schizophrenia / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to test the hypothesis that the level of current insight in patients with schizophrenia may affect autobiographical memory about their previous psychiatric history. METHODS: 28 patients with schizophrenia were interviewed with a newly designed questionnaire to report their memories about symptoms and situations during the first psychiatric admission. The subjects' memory reports were compared with their medical records. The error ratio was compared between the good and poor insight groups. RESULTS: The poor insight group demonstrated less true responses and more miss responses to the question about the existence of delusion, and more miss responses to the questions about the details of the hallucination than the good insight group. The insight level was correlated with miss ratio of the responses to questions about details of delusion. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that poor current insight in patients with schizophrenia may be related to larger distortion of autobiographical memories about certain symptoms of theirs.