Motivation and avolition in schizophrenia patients: The role of self-efficacy

This study was designed to contribute to the growing literature attempting to render symptoms of schizophrenia understandable in terms of ordinary psychological processes. Psychological explanations for the negative symptoms experienced by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia have received little attention from researchers, although previous studies have suggested that motivation in patients may be adversely affected by low expectations of reward or success. Fifty-six patients meeting the criteria for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 30 healthy controls were administered a questionnaire measure of self-efficacy, and undertook a repetitive task in which prior self-efficacy judgements were manipulated. Patients with negative symptoms reported low self-efficacy estimates for everyday tasks, which they performed less frequently than the controls. However, although low efficacy estimates for the repetitive task predicted performance, the estimates of patients with avolition did not differ from those of the patients without avolition. In a regression analysis, negative symptoms and initial self-efficacy estimates separately predicted the patients' persistence. Overall, the findings suggest that low self-efficacy is characteristic of negative symptom patients, but the causal status of such beliefs remains unclear. Future studies will require sophisticated designs to explore the effects of changes in patients' self-efficacy in real life situations.